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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



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A NOVEL 




acakeVf ^ CUred '” If y° ur house is dirty buy 


SAPOLIO. 


Dirt is a fatal disease which no physician car 
Dirt c P nta ^ s the germs of many diseases 
Viould yon be rid of dirt at a small expense 
Spend a few cents for a cake of Sapolio and vor 
won’t know what it is to have a dirty hoJse 
1 - S a soli(i ca ke of scouring soap used foi 

g"oc C e 1 r T”Sfit PUrPOSeS thl ^411 


AS COMMON MORTALS 



























AS COMMON MORTALS 



“ Get to dust as common mortals, 

By a common doom and track." 

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited 
104 & 106 Fourth Avenue, New York. 


Copyright, 1886, 

BY 

O. M. DUNHAM. 


All rights restrved. 


Pr*es of W. L. MERSHON & CO., 
Rahway, N. J. 


DEDICATION. 


With reverent affection I dedicate this book to my father. 
That he made no mark on his time, save that deep one graven on 
the hearts of those who loved him, was due to the generous 
expenditure of his fine powers for the benefit of others. 

In memory of that brave life of labor and love, I lay these 
leaves on his green grave. 










PROEM. 


According to the bracing quality and purity of the air we 
breathe is our physical health. By the mental tone of our 
surroundings, by the atmosphere for spiritual inhalation, 
created by those with whom our lives are passed, must the 
vigor or lassitude of our souls be determined. 

You and I, passing on our careless way through the world, 
by our conscious adoption of a rule of conduct less than the 
highest, by our easy conformity to things as they are, our half- 
hearted effort for things as they should be, are helping to 
breed the moral miasma which subtly steals into the fine con- 
stitution of the young souls about us, enfeebling and check- 
ing the free growth of right instinct, until at last the pas- 
sionate protest against wrong is changed into dull acqui- 
escence, and the voices that once cried with the Teacher, 
“ Be ye perfect ! ” murmur with fatal resignation the prov- 
erb ever on lips stiffening in moral paralysis “ In Rome be 
as the Romans 
























































- 



CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER I. 

" AND SO THE POOR DOG HAD NONE,” ... 9 

CHAPTER II. 

THE HARRISES, 15 

CHAPTER III. 

WHITE MERINO, 23 

CHAPTER IV. 

SUPPER AND SALVATION, 33 

CHAPTER V. 

milly’s ORATORY, 45 

CHAPTER VI. 

MISS REESE, 56 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE FRIEND OF HER SOUL, 65 

CHAPTER VIII. 

MELPOMENE HALL, 72 

CHAPTER IX. 

HASLETT AND FERRARD, 80 

CHAPTER X. 

A PROPHETESS, - 93 

CHAPTER XI. 

A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, - - - - - - 115 


VI 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE SONS OF REFORM, - - " “ “ " I2 7 

CHAPTER XIII. 

A CLUB RECEPTION, ------- 140 

CHAPTER XIV. 

AN EVENING CALL, 157 

CHAPTER XV. 

FIRST LOVE, l68 

CHAPTER XVI. 

DOUBTS, - 174 

CHAPTER XVII. 

HASLETT RESOLVES, 1 87 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

NEWS, 197 

CHAPTER XIX. 

POOR MILLY, 206 

CHAPTER XX. 

AN ACQUAINTANCE RENEWED, - - - - 214 

CHAPTER XXI. 

A MOTHER’S WEAKNESS, 226 

CHAPTER XXII. 

AMONG THE CHOSEN, 234 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

DANGER, -_ _ . - 251 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

FLIGHT, -------- 268 

CHAPTER XXV. 

UNCLE JOE TO THE RESCUE, - - - . 2? - 


CONTENTS . 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE LAST OF THE VAN SITTARTS, - 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

FOUR YEARS, 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A QUESTION OF HONOR, .... 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

VANITY FAIR, 

CHAPTER XXX. 

FAMILIAR FACES, 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

another's woe, 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

TWO LOVERS, - 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

AN UNACCEPTED REFUSAL, 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE CONQUEST OF FERRARD, - 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

MR. WHITE RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

IN CAMP, 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, - 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

“ AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN," - 


vii 

286 

296 

301 

309 

322 

337 

345 

35° 

35 6 

37i 

378 

39i 

39 s 



















* 





- >4 






1 















































































































































AS COMMON MORTALS 


CHAPTER I. 

“ AND SO THE POOR DOG HAD NONE ! " 

W HATEVER may be thought of the moral atmosphere 
of Goverick, the physical atmosphere is certainly 
beyond reproach. The sea wind sweeps through its long 
irregular streets bearing health in its salt breath. The ten- 
ement house population is so small as to be an unconsidered 
factor in the sanitary reputation of the city, and the sewer- 
age is at least approximately good. 

If it ever happen that a distinguished foreigner with 
views and a note book should visit Goverick for any pur- 
pose beyond that of listening to the great preacher who 
makes the whole city (to the world at large) subsidiary to 
his pulpit, the peripatetic philosopher would surely, after 
study of' Goverick, make this entry in the aforesaid note 
book : 

“ Visited Goverick. Architecturally unmentionable. 
Commercially unimportant. Socially of deep interest, as 
embodying more completely than any other city of equal 
size and age, the American intention.” 

Goverick presents to the casual observer that old world 
Utopia, that dream of the socialist, and despair of the polit- 


10 


A S COMMON MOR TALS. 


ical economist, a social organization where, roughly speak- 
ing, “no rich, no poor,” are to be found. 

Wealth there is in Goverick, but expended, if not spar- 
ingly, so ineffectively that beside the opulent magnificence 
of its metropolitan neighbor it scarcely presents an appear- 
ance more imposing than can be described by the word 
“ comfortable The poor, alas ! we have always with us, 
but poverty in Goverick is, for the most part, of that cheer- 
ful and endurable form which consists in having little and 
wanting less, from a convenient ignorance of the large 
demands of modern life. 

There are splendid mansions in Goverick, and there are 
squalid streets, but comparatively speaking, tenement 
houses and hovels are few and far between, and hotels and 
apartment houses are almost unknown. 

But in Goverick may be found row after row of well- 
built three-story houses of brick and of stone, where three 
maid servants are employed, and the family dine at six, and 
row after row of two-story brick and frame dwellings where 
one maid composes the retinue and the family dine decently 
and comfortably at one, guiltless alike of oyster forks and 
“after dinner” coffee cups. 

The Goverick which dines at six uses engraved cards and 
is not ignorant of the enormity of a dress-coat by day or a 
white satin tie at any time. But there is no sharp line of 
deraarkation drawn between those who are stamped with 
the “ hall-mark of gentility ”, and those who are not, and n 
the majolica bowls of Goverick social leaders lurk occa- 
sional cards, cream in tint, German in text, and alas ! gilt 
in edge. Not infrequently does the Goverick matron, in 
whose chaste breast springs eternal the hope of becoming 
one day a Goverick social leader, sign herself as Mrs. John 
Smith with a fine disregard of autographic laws, and more 
frequently still does her lovely daughter haunt the shops of 


AND SO THE POOR DOG HAD NONE ! 


II 


a morning, clad in silks of gorgeous hue, bead laden, fringe 
finished, crowned by bonnets of gauzy texture and floral 
splendor. 

One morning — say a dozen years and more ago— in the 
door way of a house, the snug comfort of which radiated 
from every window with an indication of that happy medium 
between elegance and simplicity as expressed by two maids 
and five o’clock dinner, stood a lady whose anxious blue 
eyes wandered uncertainly up and down the street. The 
fair hair, coiled in a smooth circle at the back of her small 
head, was of that drab tint which is silver before we 
notice the gray threads in it. Not all the maternal anxiety 
expressed in her searching gaze could entirely obscure the 
habitual expression of pensive amiability in her eyes. The 
mouth was not small, but compressed with pretty primness, 
as of one who found life more or less indecorous. 

Just now the genuine look of motherly reproachfulness 
deepened the lines about it, as a small figure dashed impet- 
uously around the corner of the street and up the steps 
before her. 

“ Milly ! ” she said, “ where have you been, you naughty 
girl ? Mamma has been so anxious about you ? ” 

“ I have been with Helen,” answered the child, “ and I 
hate her 1 ” 

“ That is not at all a pretty way to speak of your cousin,” 
said the mother, leading the reluctant Milly within doors. 
“ I don’t see why you never can- get along with Sarah’s 
children.” 

“ Helen is a beast ! ” exclaimed Milly, vehemently. 

“ I shall punish you, Milly, if you dare to speak in that 
manner again.” 

“ Then you may punish me now,” cried Milly, feeling 
herself in one of those moral crises which come to us all, 
when the future may be reduced to chaos, and the past rem 


12 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


dered an unproductive blank for the sake of expressing the 
burning conviction of the present. “ She is a beast, and I 
hope she will perish ! ” 

Mrs. Barron did not immediately execute her threat of 
punishment. She led the quivering, defiant little figure 
into the room, known in Goverick parlance as the “ back 
parlor ”, and seating herself, still holding the hot, nervous 
little hand, asked with a touch of resignation in her voice, 
“ What has Helen done ? ” Milly began to speak very 
fast. 

“ You know that corner lot, mamma, where they are digging 
the cellar for a house ? Well, Helen and I were looking at 
the big rocks left in the side where the earth is most off, and 
right there on the sidewalk, by the edge of the cellar, there 
was a dog ; such a thin little dog, mamma, and rough, with 
the bones sticking right out, and oh, mamma, such lovely 
brown eyes ! And he only had a very little tail, but he was 
wagging it with joy, because he had found a bone, a very 
nice bone indeed, with lots of meat on it, and I don’t 
believe he’d had any thing to eat for weeks before. Oh, he 
seemed so pleased ! Well, when Helen and I came up he 
was afraid of us, and dropped the bone and ran off a little 


way— not far— and stood looking, first at his nice bone, and 
then at us. And mamma, what do you think that fiend, that 
wicked, wicked Helen did ? She kicked— she kicked’ that 
bone right down into the cellar where the doggie could not 
get it, and then she laughed. And oh ! he ran to the edge 
and looked down after it, and then up at us, and his eyes ! 
you never saw any thing so surprised and wistful — just as if 
he didn’t understand how she could do such a thing And 
she laughed and laughed. Mamma, I want to kill her i 
Mamma, just think what a weak little dog he must have been 
to drop that bone ; dogs always hold on so. Oh, those poor 
lovely eyes'! and he was so thin ! »• 


“ AND SO THE POOR DOG HAD NONE!" 13 

A tempest of sobs checked further utterance. 

Mrs. Barron watched the child with a certain gentle look 
of distress peculiar to her. Possessed of a kindly and 
dutiful nature, she yet lacked the touch of exquisite sensi- 
bility which made the lot of her small daughter a dubiously 
joyful affair ! Such tenderness as she had was all bestowed 
on the members of her family ; there was not much to spare 
for the outside world. The sweet, limited nature did what 
it could. 

“ Milly,” she said at last, “ Helen was very naughty, but 
I think the little dog did not suffer as much as you imagine. 
And he certainly had eaten something in weeks. He would 
not have been alive otherwise.” 

Milly experienced a sense of acute relief from mamma's 
assurance that the little dog’s sufferings had possibly been 
of shorter duration than her lively fancy had led her to 
believe, while at the same time her dramatic nature rather 
regretted the loss of any element which heightened the 
tragedy of doggie’s bereavement. 

“ You don’t know how thin he was, mamma,” she said, very 
earnestly, with an ill-defined sense often present with her in 
later years, that the catastrophe should be complete enough 
to justify her passionate grief therein. 

Mrs. Barron did not discuss the physical condition of the 
unfortunate puppy. 

“ I must punish you now, Milly,” she said gravely, “you 
disobeyed mamma in calling Helen that naughty name. I 
am sorry your feelings have been hurt, but I must send you 
to the hall bed-room for half an hour. Take my watch with 
you.” 

Milly’s ready tears burst forth again. That mamma should 
punish her when she was already so unhappy ! 

“ Even the dog wouldn’t notice me when I called to him 
so that I could take him home and feed him. But then I 


14 


A S COM MO! V MOR TA L S. 


shouldn’t think he would in such company,” she concluded, 
a sudden rush of compunction for blaming that too afflicted 
cur overcoming her. 

She wiped her eyes with a minute pocket handkerchief, 
whereon an arabesque of kittens’ heads in scarlet gave a 
touch of pathetic absurdity to her woes, and departed to 
solitary confinement in the hall bed-room, saying as she 
went : “ I think when God makes such a dog as that He 

ought to take care of it.” 


CHAPTER II. 


THE HARRISES. 

M RS. BARRON was a much regarded member of a 
family which had, numerically speaking, nothing to 
complain of, whatever might be the opinion of the outside 
world on that point. Her three sisters and two brothers had 
set up their household gods in Goverick locations of more 
or less eligibility ; the Harris family always had lived in 
Goverick and were Goverick born, bred and buried in turn. 
They were also Goverick married, it not being considered 
the thing in the Harris family to marry a dangerously 
unfamiliar person from another city who might possess lax 
views on the subjects of religion and housekeeping. There 
is a tradition to the effect that an otherwise unobjectionable 
young man had once asked for the fair hand of the second 
Miss Harris, (subsequently Mrs. Elkins), and had been 
sternly denied that blessing by her father, simply on the 
ground that the unfortunate suitor had once traveled 
extensively in Mexico. 

Excellent people, collectively and individually, were the 
Harrises, so eminently respectable that no one thought of 
applying the word to them, seeking few interests outside of 
family relations, and living and dying in the faith that to 
be a born Harris was a career in itself. 

No pride of birth or wealth gave rise to this cherished 
conviction ; the Harrises were not conspicuously endowed 
in these particulars, and they would have scorned to attain 
the isolated distinction of special achievement, It was a, 


l6 ' AS COMMON MORTALS. 

mere consciousness of general worth, a calm certainty that 
the Harris blood flowed in unexceptionable veins, and 
temperately found show and shabbiness alike distasteful. 
Keenly alive to their own interests, they showed honorable 
deference to those of others, and this form of “ worldli- 
ness without side-dishes ” had its touch of poetry which 
poor humanity is nowhere poor enough to be entirely with- 
out. The cloak of simple egotism which kept them warm 
in a cold and (probably) unappreciative world had its soft 
lining of genuine family affection and helpful kinship, 
and, perhaps, the blindness to all unrelated forms of virtue 
arose from preoccupation with the real excellence to be 
found at home. 

When the four husbands of the whilom Misses Harris and 
the two Harris brothers went severally through the failure 
to which every American man of business is doomed once in 
the course of his mercantile life, the others were ready with 
prompt aid, advice, and not more regretful head-shaking 
and reminding of neglected counsel than the occasion 
demanded. This amiable community of goods extended to 
views on all subjects, the four sisters only reserving for 
themselves, unshared by the two brothers, an unbiased opin- 
ion concerning the merits of Mrs. John and Mrs. Edward 
Harris, who, though distinguished from the ordinary mass 
of humanity by marrying into the Harris family, yet left 
something to be desired (by their sisters-in-law) in “ ways ” 
acquired in years wasted outside the pale of that desirable 
connection. 

Mrs. Barron and Mrs. Mercer agreed that, consider- 
ing John s salary, Gertrude’s dresses fitted far too 
well, and Mrs. Elkins, whose lot chronic biliousness, 
complicated with the unsatisfactory state of the com- 
mission business, had much imbittered, often remarked 
that it would be well if Gertrude Harris would remember 


THE HARRISES. 


17 


that as Miss Lawrence she never had a thing made out 
of the house. 

Mrs. White, the most spiritually minded among the sis- 
ters, felt that the luke-warm temperature of Mrs. Edward’s 
zeal for the Presbyterian faith (which she had adopted per- 
force with the name of Harris), was greatly to be deplored, 
and with the others decided that if Edward could be to 
blame in any matter, his culpable tendency to indulge his wife 
with frequent attendance at the services of the Episcopal 
Church would be that matter. 

The husbands of these ladies, who regarded the con- 
descension in discarding the name of Harris for their respec- 
tive patronymics as equivalent to a future of concessions 
from themselves, fully shared the views of their wives on 
these points. Mr. Elkins felt that Mrs. John’s many bon- 
nets *were not quite compatible with full development of 
the domestic affections, and Mr. White, a warm-hearted 
man, with — the usual accompaniment of such a temperament 
— much warmth of language, characterized Mrs. Edward’s 
leaning to candlesticks as “ poppy-cock ”, to which his wife 
assented with even more than her usual ready meekness, 
remarking that Maria always was fond of show. 

Milly had early been given to understand the fact that to 
be lacking in proper appreciation of the uncles and aunts, 
was to demonstrate, to a marked degree, her undue share in 
the total depravity with which the human race is so fatally 
dowered. But indeed this parental instruction had been 
hardly necessary. The child had brought into the world 
with her a heart so rich in affection that there was enough 
and to spare for all immediate and collateral relatives, and 
she found herself much restricted in the expression thereof, 
even with so wide a field for its display. 

Mrs. Barron possessed, to a marked degree, the maternal 
instinct, and loved her children with a fierce motherliness 


AS COMMON MORTALS . 


18 

which made her fairly jealous of other childish charms ; 
but after the days of toddling, lisping babyhood were passed 
she rarely petted them, feeling herself shrink shyly from 
their perception of her intense affection, which, as infants, 
they had accepted with the uncomprehending satisfaction of 
all small, tame animals under caresses. 

The pretty boys had never lived to outgrow the little 
jackets that had been fashioned by the motherly hands for 
their first “ term ” at school. The same hands had taken 
them off one night and hung them up, only to take them 
down, alas ! to fold away with other useless little garments, 
with worthless, priceless childish treasures, and small books 
and slates, laid aside now for the long recess. 

That grief was many years old now, and Milly had come, 
a willing comforter, whose powers of consolation were much 
mitigated by her red curls, indifference to dolls, and general 
lack of Harris characteristics. 

In her earliest days Milly accepted the infallibility of the 
uncles and aunts with loving fervor, and to have dared dis- 
criminate in her loyal affection, to have preferred one to the 
other, would have seemed as sacrilegious as distinguishing 
one of the four Gospels for especial regard. She prayed 
for them all after papa and mamma, and hoped she might 
grow good enough to please them. The child was no innate 
rebel ; hers was not a soul to which opposition is dear. 
The pathetic faith of childhood that “ whatever is, is right," 
was strong within her, and this innocent optimism helped 
over many of the rough places encountered before her 
years were numbered by two figures. 

But the artistic temperament, efernally young in one 
respect, matures rapidly in others. Milly's quick sense of the 
beautiful, soon taught her to single out for special adoration 
her Aunt Lena, Mrs. Mercer, who was quite remarkably 
pretty. Milly thought if she could ever look like Aunt Lena, 


THE HARRISES. 


19 


life’s trials would become joyfully endurable. The black- 
browed, black-lashed blue eyes, the pretty arch with which 
the fair hair grew on the white forehead, the well-defined 
roses in the creamy cheeks — all these beauties appealed 
anew to Milly’s ardent little soul on the day following the 
episode of the defrauded dog, as she watched Aunt Lena 
sitting at the piano and singing — a little bit out of tune — a 
song which seemed to the child mysteriously beautiful. 
The unhappy frequenter of amateur concerts can hardly 
appreciate the rapture stirred by the threadbare bal- 
lad “ Waiting”. It seemed all one to Milly with the sudden 
rush of passionate admiration that filled her heart, and 
music and beauty combined proved as fascinating to her as 
to older mortals. 

With a final chase over the key-board, and a vociferous 
adjuration to the stars and nightingales to guide and speed 
the flying feet of the expected lover, the music ceased. 

“ Aunt Lena, I do love you so ! ” cried Milly, throwing 
her slender arms around that lady’s neck. 

“ That is very sweet of you, Milly,” said Aunt Lena, with 
a careless kiss, and a careful hand arranging the lace at 
the throat which the child’s impetuous caress had rumpled. 
“ But you should not seize one in that rude manner.” 

Milly was wounded, but not in the least offended. It 
was not easy to chill that warm young heart into permanent 
alienation. The old fatal persuasion that bodily beauty is 
the inevitable expression of spiritual loveliness impelled her 
to utter, with a timid trust in comprehension, a psychic ex- 
perience that she had hitherto kept shyly hidden in one of 
the innermost folds of her consciousness. 

“ Aunt Lena,” she said, in a gentle, hesitating voice, 
“ did you ever — when you were sitting all alone, you 
know — have it come over you, ‘ This is I ! ' and be 
afraid ? ” 


20 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Aunt Lena’s blue eyes widened. “ For goodness’ sake ! 
What on earth do you mean, child ? ” 

“ I can't say it in words, aunty, not as it really is, but I 
know what I mean, and you must too ! ” Milly’s voice took 
on a pleading tone. “ You must when you look in the 
glass, deep down into your own eyes, and look and look 
until by and by it isn’t your own self that is looking at its 
own self, but something that is you, and isn’t you, and is 
watching both of them.” 

I am not aware if at that time “ Kenelm Chillingly ” had 
found a place in Goverick circulating libraries, but it would 
have attracted Mrs. Mercer at no time, and in her sublime 
indifference to psychological studies she had thus no sooth- 
ing parallel in fiction, such as that of the eight-years-old 
Kenelm astounding his estimable mother with the query : 
“ Mamma, are you not sometimes overcome by a sense of 
your own identity ? ” 

“ I don’t understand you, Milly,” she said, with an 
alarmed sense of defective hearing. “ Say it again, and 
don’t chatter so fast.” 

Milly repeated obediently, word for word, a dawning fear 
in the brown glory of her eyes. She did not want to have 
that feeling all alone. No one ever understood what she 
meant about any thing. Any one “ so pretty ” as Aunt 
Lena ought to know all about it. Mrs. Mercer seized the 
hot little hands. 

“ Have you got a fever ? ” she asked abruptly. 

But the hands were moist as well as hot, and indeed were 
never cold, so Mrs, Mercer, deprived of this physical basis 
for Milly’s aberrations, found it convenient to dismiss this 
problematic infant and carry the tale of her wanderings to 
Mrs. Elkins, who was regarded as an authority on all mat- 
ters of domestic economy, including the government of 
children. 


THE HARRISES. 


21 


But notwithstanding the fact of her peculiar insight with 
regard to the workings of the infant mind, that lady frankly 
declared that Milly was “ beyond ” her. This not at all in 
the admiring sense that the words might convey to the unin- 
itiated, but with a conviction that a child so ill-regulated 
as to be beyond her aunt’s comprehension had little to hope 
for the future ; for the “ beyond ” was necessarily in the 
direction of evil, else the Harris divination would never be 
outstripped. 

“ That child is more trouble to her mother than all my 
five are to me,” she said, plaintively. “ I don’t see where 
she gets it from. Mary was always a sensible little thing, 
and Mark’s people are reasonable folks — though they might 
be more genteel. -It is not ordinary naughtiness with Milly ; 
it would be easier to manage if it was. She isn’t greedy 
or quarrelsome in the natural way, but she’ll scream if you 
lay a finger on that kitten of hers, and she just can’t get 
along with any one. Yesterday she rushed screaming 
through the streets because she’d had some fuss with my 
Helen about a dog, and last week she cried herself sick 
because she said Helen had murdered some roses. Mrs. 
Banks gave them each a bunch, just common garden roses, 
and Helen got tired of carrying hers — they were spoiling 
her glove — so she threw them on the side-walk and then 
happened to step on them. Milly declared she did it on 
purpose, said she trampled them to death, and talked about 
the flowers’ blood, and nonsense enough to drive you wild, 
and finally rushed home without her supper, though Mary 
had sent her here to stay. She’s a very trying child ; there's 
no denying it.” 

“ Look at the way she is with dolls,” said Mrs. Mercer, 
whose English had suffered from a too exclusive devotion 
to the fine arts as represented by “ spatter-work ” and the 
ballads of Claribel and Millard. But then the demand for 


22 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


elegant English in Goverick by no means exceeded the 
supply. 

“ I never saw her with a doll.” 

“That’s just it, look at that doll they gave her 
Christmas. Mary paid three dollars and seventy- 
five cents for that doll, undressed, and the things she 
made for it are too lovely for any thing. Well, that 
child never notices it, but goes into the laundry to wash 
pebbles in a pail, and when they come out glistening with 
the water calls them jewels, and says she is a lapidary ! 
And I found her one day sailing chips in the gutter and 
guiding them with a barrel-hoop, and when I asked her 
what pleasure she found in such a boy’s play as that, she 
said it wasn’t a boy’s play, but that each chip was a human 
soul, and that if she could keep it from going down the 
sewer at the corner it would be saved, but if not, it was 
eternally lost. Her mother says she kept one chip for weeks, 
and took it out to sail after every heavy rain. She absolutely 
cried when it went down the sewer at last. She thought 
more of that one chip than all her dolls put together. It’s 
just no use to give them to her.” 

“ Well, there isn’t a bit of Harris in her,” said Mrs. 
Elkins sadly. “ And I don’t see as there’s much Barron 
either.” 


CHAPTER III. 


WHITE MERINO. 

M ILLY trotted home, happily unconscious of her lack 
of inherited virtues, but with her usual perplexed 
sense of being out of harmony with her environment. She 
was not unaware of her superior mental endowment ; she 
had heard herself described as “ very bright ” too often to 
escape from a belief in her own precocity, but the brightness 
seemed to be coupled with overpowering disadvantages. 
It gave rise to emotions which were vaguely reprehensible. 
Poor child ! she was alternately snubbed and praised until 
she began to feel herself an exceptional person indeed, 
but a person marred by mysterious deficiencies. 

“ Helen, now,” she said to herself as she trudged along, 
her pale, eager little face looking out intently from its frame 
of ruddy curls, “ When Aunt Sarah moved into that new 
house — that is four years ago, I heard mamma say — I loved 
Helen just as well as the rest, except when she was ugly to 
me. And everyone says she is such a nice child. But I’m 
getting to hate her, and it’s wicked to hate. And I hate 
her for things that nobody seems to mind. I wish Aunt 
Lena would love me ever so much more than she does 
Helen. My beautiful aunty ! I think she is the prettiest 
lady in all the world. I never noticed until to-day how 
pretty she is.” 

These sudden gusts of affection raised by beauty alone 
were rather frequent with Milly. She had watched day 
after day, during school hours, a handsome, elegant child 


24 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


whose seat was within direct range of her vision. The 
pretty creature was not among her intimates, having different 
hours from her own for recitations and recess, but Milly 
watched her, fascinated. One day she asked the teacher if 
she might speak to Addie Berry. With timid delight in the 
permission she crossed the room to seat herself by the object 
of her admiration, and asked of her some simple question. 
Addie raised her beautiful little face from her book, and 
answered, in a tone kindly enough, but so coarse and harsh 
that the flame of Milly’s delicate enthusiasm flickered out 
like a candle in a rough draught. She said little more, and 
from that day Addie’s charm for her was broken. 

Something of the same feeling had come to her with Aunt 
Lena’s reception of her timid confidence, but the sweet 
habit of old affection was secure beneath the new admira- 
tion for her aunt’s beauty, and she did not lose her imagi- 
native adoration until long after, when continued indiffer- 
ence had chilled it to death. 

Mrs. Barron welcomed Milly with the familiar blending 
of affection and reproof. 

“ Where have you been all this time, Milly ? And don’t 
you remember that you are going to Aunt Lucy’s to tea ? ” 

“ Yes’m, I didn’t know it was so late.” 

“ Come and be dressed, then ; I want to get you all fixed 
before I begin n^self.” 

Milly’s eyes sparkled as her mother turned to the bed 
where lay, in delicate order, the various small garments 
destined to adorn her for the evening’s festivity. 

“ Oh, mamma ! are you going to let me wear my white 
merino ? ” she asked, breathlessly. 

“ 1 think y° u may to-night,” replied Mrs. Barron, her 
utterance somewhat clogged by the pins which she held 
between her teeth. “ It’s being a good deal dressed, but 
you are growing so fast that you can’t wear it much longer 


WHITE MERINO. 


25 


as it is. It’s up above your knees now, and it’s been let 
down as far as it’ll go.” 

Milly stood perfectly still as the gown was drawn over 
her head. She had not more than the usual share of innocent, 
childish vanity, and her appearance was as yet a secondary 
consideration with her. But that white merino dress repre- 
sented to her all the refinements of existence ; a delicious 
sense of luxurious elegance pervaded her in being allowed 
to wear it on an occasion of such slight formality as tea at 
Aunt Lucy’s. It was really a pretty little gown, Mrs. Bar- 
ron’s deft fingers being guided by a rather surprisingly cor- 
rect taste, and no empress, trailing in robes of state, no 
American beauty, Worth-clad and conscious, ever thrilled 
with a sense of regal splendor so keen as that now animat- 
ing the dreamy child who fastened the tiny loops of white 
satin ribbon over her little breast with trembling rapture. 

“ I will wait for you in the parlor, mamma,” she said, 
descending the stairs to seat herself by the marble topped 
table, which was the only piece of furniture the room boasted 
which could in Milly’s mind properly set off the wonderful 
gown. 

Do not imagine that it was the ordinary feminine delight in 
millinery, the innate love for adornment in the budding 
woman that roused the ardent little soul into such delight. She 
did not lack the love for pretty garments possessed by every 
normal woman, but her enthusiastic pleasure had a deeper 
root in her heart than any sent down by these summer plants 
of the soul. Which one of us lives in the world as it 
is ? And what imaginative child, whose ideas are the result 
of precocious knowledge and pathetic ignorance, but creates 
a dream-world for itself from scraps of information and 
rainbow-tinted bits of fancy ? 

Milly’s reading, miscellaneous and oddly assorted, had 
contributed to her native tendency to romance, and while 


26 


A S COMMON MOR TALS. 


in no sense rebelling at the material limitations of her lot, 
or seriously conceiving a larger life as possible to her, she 
loved to imagine herself playing a wider part in existence, 
with a stage-setting more or less gorgeous. That there 
were people in the world to whom white merino, or its 
equivalent, on every day occasions was a matter of course, 
she knew. There was a little princess in England, the 
youngest daughter of the royal house, only a few years 
older than herself. Milly supposed white metino at break- 
fast would be no delightful shock to the mind of infant 
royalty. If only mamma had not mentioned that the dress 
would soon be too short for her ! That marred the com- 
pleteness of enjoyment. It was less agreeable to wear one’s 
best gown on an every day occasion, because it would soon be 
unfit for special days. Such reasons were surely never 
given to princesses. 

The parlor where Milly in solitary grandeur awaited her 
mother was the Goverick parlor of eighteen seventy. It is 
therefore hardly necessary to state that the furniture was 
covered with red reps, the windows curtained with Not- 
tingham lace, and that the long gilt-framed mirror reflected 
the silver card receiver which stood on the marble slab 
before it, while the glass covering the engraving of the 
“ Huguenot Lovers ” over the mantlepiece, caught fainter 
reflections of the pictures of “ Shakespeare and his friends,*’ 
and “Washington Crossing the Delaware”, on the opposite 
wall. But there was a touch, not quite commonplace, dis- 
played in the arrangement of these commonplace furnish- 
ings, and on the marble-topped table a really exquisite little 
vase of alabaster made ample atonement for the orna- 
mental paper-weight and “ Book of British Song ” beside it. 
With the aid of this vase and table, Milly was able to dream 
that she dwelt in marble halls and be blissfully content. 

Mrs. Barron came down presently, equipped for 


WHITE MERINO. 


27 


departure, bearing Milly’s hat and jacket in her 
hand. 

“ Aren’t you going to wait for papa ? ” asked papa’s girl. 

“ Papa will meet us at Aunt Lucy’s. Come, let me put 
on your hat and jacket.” 

Mrs. White met them at her door. Imagine the blue 
amiability of Mrs. Barron’s glance shaded into pensiveness ; 
the gentle compression of the lips tightened into rigidity, 
and the slenderness of the figure stiffened into angularity, 
and you have Aunt Lucy’s portrait. She was a woman 
whom every one described as “ so sweet ”, and conserved 
this reputation with much care. She never expressed her- 
self rashly on any subject; and there were many subjects 
on which she never expressed herself at all. But she was 
capable of maintaining a silence pregnant with gall for the 
few who could interpret it. At sixteen Milly described her- 
self, after enduring one hour of Aunt Lucy’s silences, as 
“ an imbittered futility ”. This hyperbole, perhaps, does not 
ill-express the sensation of a passionate, logical nature in 
clashing with one at once passive and resistant, whom all 
passion fails to sweep into action, and whose utter inability 
to reason causes prejudice to harden into unmodified stoni- 
ness, against which the waves of the more vigorous, fluent 
nature dash hopelessly with a maddening sense of frustra- 
tion. 

But Milly at ten included Aunt Lucy without reserve in 
her affections, and only felt that her misdemeanors took 
on a darker hue when they came under those mournful blue 
eyes. 

Mrs. White was the prosperous member of the Harris 
family, having been fortunate enough to marry a man who 
found in sugar an ample field for the exercise of his great 
abilities. But the early habit of frugality, aided by a native 
bias toward economy for its own s*ike ? enabled her to bear 


28 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


her improved fortunes with becoming modesty, while the 
unsatisfactory number of eggs given for a quarter tempered 
any undue elation with regret. 

She looked now at Millyas Mrs. Barron drew off the little 
jacket and hat and adjusted the thick red curls with moth- 
erly touches. 

“ I'm sorry you should think it necessary to dress Milly 
up so, just to come here to tea, Mary,” she said, sadly. 

“ She grows so fast that I thought she might as well get 
the good out of her dress now,” said Mrs. Barron, apolo- 
getically. 

“ I don’t think she can grow much faster than Kittie,” 
said Mrs. White, unconvinced. “ And she has already worn 
her white merino to parties and the church festival. She 
has got to make it do for another season.” 

Mrs. Barron, stricken with a sense of guilty extravagance, 
was happily spared the necessity of further inadequate 
excuse by the entrance of Mr. White. He was a short, 
heavily-built, florid man, with a keen expression, softened 
by hearty good will, his evident satisfaction with things in 
general including a satisfaction with himself in particular 
as an important factor in the desirable state of things in his 
own city and the country at large. 

“Ah, Milly,” he said, with a jovial laugh, “come and 
kiss me. Mary, suppose you kiss me, too. Dear me, how 
fine we are !” 

“ You are looking well, Josiah,” said Mrs. Barron, hastily 
endeavoring to prevent further discussion of Milly’s undue 
splendor. 

“ Well > yes, pretty well. I have need to be. Business is 
booming in a way that keeps me busy enough, and then I 
have this election on my hands. Eldon looks to me to 
pull him through. He’s a fine fellow, Eldon, but not 
exactly limber enough ; he doesn’t know how to speak to 


WHITE MERINO . 


29 


the general crowd ; flies above their heads and makes 
them think he’s showing off his fine education. That 
doesn’t do, you know ; a man wants to come out flat-footed 
and talk to them in their own style. But I’ve given him 
points. There’s a mass meeting at Varina Hall next week, 
and he'll do better then.” 

Mrs. Barron was duly impressed by the civic importance 
of her worthy brother-in-law. 

“ I wish Mark had more time for politics,” she said. 
“ But he’s just worked to death as it is.” 

“ He takes life too hard,” said Mr. White. “ I’ve often 
said to him, ‘ Barron, why don’t you take it easy ? ’ But 
what’s the use of talking. He’s made so.” 

“ You didn’t mention whether Sarah was coming or not, 
Lucy,” said Mrs. Barron to her sister, not caring to discuss 
her husband’s inability to view life from Mr. White’s stand- 
point. 

“ No, only Lena and Henry. So long as Milly’s here I 
can’t ask Sarah without the children, and the leaves don’t 
hold out any longer, the family’s getting so large. 
The table nearly fills the dining-room as it is. I 
mean to have all Sarah's family next week, and John 
and Gertrude and Ed and Maria and the boys the week 
after.” 

“ Oh, there’s Kitty ! ” interrupted Milly, with a smile of 
pleasure. Kitty came up to Milly with more than an 
answering radiance on her sweet, broad little face, as 
thickly splashed with brown freckles as the petals of an 
unoffending tiger lily. 

Milly loved Kitty very much, and always felt herself 
blamable in not enjoying playing with her at all. Kitty was 
never unkind like Helen, or “ mad ” like Uncle Edward’s 
Mary, but she wanted to “ play dolls ” all the time, and 
unremitting in her attentions to her numerous waxen and 


3 ° 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


china family, was as uninteresting to Milly as the typical 
“ devoted mother ” is to society at large. 

Kitty dressed and undressed her dolls at stated hours. 
She took them out to walk. She gave them tea parties 
where .they were served with the traditional “cambric tea ” 
reserved for infantile delectation. She put them to bed 
with maternal tenderness, and they were always present in 
her little mind. 

Milly’s dolls, when brought forth at rare intervals from 
the monotonous seclusion of the top shelf in the toy closet, 
were made to pass through a troublous season, sufficiently 
filled with vicissitude to make peaceful solitude dear, even 
to a puppet. She did not “baby ” them as Kitty babied 
hers ; no such domestic bliss fell to their lot. They 
died. They “came to life again”. They retired to 
nunneries. They married princes. They inherited fab- 
ulous fortunes. They founded asylums for little girls 
whom nobody loved. They experienced religion. Their 
adventures delicious, dire and tragic, made Kitty very sorry 
for these harassed dollies. There was one good thing 
about it, though, Milly always touched the dolls gently, 
save in emergencies, when the unities of dramatic art 
required that they should be flung over precipices (repre- 
sented by the sofa), in escaping from fierce barons, usually 
personated by the poker and tongs. And when at last 
they were restored to their quiet haven on the top shelf, 
Milly always laid them down tenderly, never throwing them 
about carelessly as Cousin Mary did, because,, as she said, 
she wouldn’t hurt the feelings of a doll even if she could 
help it. 

Kitty’s eyes now rested on Milly with gentle 
wonder. 

“ She’s got on her white merino,” she said at last. 

“ Don’t say any thing more about it, dear,” said Mrs. 


WHITE ME IV VO. 


31 


White forbearingly, and Milly felt suddenly oppressed by a 
mysterious sense of guilt toward Kitty. 

“ Tea’s ready, mamma,” said Kitty, obediently abandoning 
the dangerous subject. “ Bridget says the bell is broken.” 

Mrs. White, unseen by her sister and niece, cast a glance 
of mingled sorrow and wrath upon Kitty. That child was 
certainly devoid of all sense of propriety. To divulge 
domestic secrets in that unnecessary manner ! For a 
moment she felt that her maternal trials equaled those of 
Milly’s unfortunate mother. She led the way down the 
Brussels-carpeted, brass-rodded staircase with patient 
resignation. As they passed the open folding-doors of the 
parlor, Mrs. Barron stopped suddenly. 

“ Why, Lucy ! When did you get that ? ” she 
exclaimed. 

“ Oh, my new lambrequin,” said Mrs. White, the placid 
gloom of her face dispelled by an emotion of modest pride. 
“ I got it last week. Dawes made the mantle-board for me. 
He charged me seventy-five cents for that board, and it’s 
very poorly made. Fifty would have been plenty. But I 
didn’t make any fuss, and the board doesn’t show now it’s 
covered.” 

“ What is the material ? ” asked Mrs. Barron, holding a 
corner between her fingers in a manner never acquired 
under thirty years of age, or by a person without “ faculty 

“ It’s felt,” answered Mrs. White, not insensible to the 
gratification of giving information and displaying an origi- 
nal taste at the same time. “ It looks like cloth, doesn’t it ? 
And yet I think it sets out the velvet band and the ball 
fringe even better than cloth.” 

“ Does it wear well ? ” asked Mrs. Barron, anxiously. 

“ Why, yes, I think so ; there doesn’t much wear and tear 
come on a lambrequin.” 

“ Why didn’t you have it all one color, Lucy ? ” asked 


32 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Mrs. Barron, a little timidly. But the question was irre- 
pressible. 

“ Well, I like the contrast better,” answered Mrs. White, 
with a touch of injury in her mild tones. “ But we can’t 
all think alike.” Which remark met with the usual cordial 
reception accorded it. 

“ Maria’s is a good color,” said Mrs. Barron as they 
descended the basement staircase. 

“ I don’t care for it,” said Mrs. White, with quiet bitter- 
ness. “ And for my part, I can’t afford plush. You don’t 
see many plush lambrequins in Goverick houses like 
Edward’s. I don’t believe there are more than four 
people in our church who have them. But then you 
can’t really call Maria one of our members. She might 
as well belong where she .goes.” 

“ Yes, for she never will go where she belongs,” said Mrs. 
Barron, with a delightful sense of epigrammatic felicity. 

Mr. and Mrs. Mercer here joined them, and Mrs. White 
said no more, feeling herself to have been indiscreet already. 
In order to preserve a reputation for amiability it is neces- 
sary to keep lips tightly sealed, even when vital questions 
are being discussed. Mrs. White was more than successful 
in reserving her opinions for private use, but there are 
occasions when overpowering emotion will break down the 
barriers raised by habitual self-command. That plush # 
lambrequin of Maria’s had more than once caused her 
gentle sister-in-law to swerve from her ideal of non-com- 
mittal excellence. 


CHAPTER IV. 


SUPPER AND SALVATION. 

I N our younger days, poring over the simple romances of 
domestic manufacture, have we not sighed for one of 
the muffins which Faith Derrick perpetually turned for Mr. 
Linden — fora slice of the custard pies which kind Mrs. Van 
Brunt sent to Ellen Montgomery in the midst of her house- 
keeping perplexities ? 

A little later have we not seated ourselves at the Christ- 
mas board spread for us by dear Charles Dickens ? What 
noble turkeys ! What spheres of bliss, holly-decked, flame- 
tipped, were the royal plum puddings ! And who of us 
did not envy John Westlock the privilege of entertaining 
Tom Pinch in the room where the jam “ peeped coyly 
througtrthe lattice-work of pastry, like the precious creature 
it was ” ? 

As the years begin to count up against us, do these 
hearty meals begin to pall ? Do we not become a little 
fastidious and dine with Pendennis off gold plate at the 
table of the Marquis of Steyne ? Do we not learn to despise 
poor Talbot Twysden’s poisonous port and feebly vicious 
sherry, impotent to wash away the flavor of the villainous 
entrees blandly tendered by Mrs. Twysden’s hungry foot- 
man ? 

But what maiden, at least, would willingly for- 
sake the dainty table which Mirobolant decked for 
Blanche Amory? And is there a man with soul so 
dead as to escape the longing to slip off with George 


34 


A S COMMON MOR TA LS. 


Warrington to the back kitchen for a chop and a pewter 
pot of ale ? 

How shall we ask those whose youthful imaginations 
have feasted on the culinary triumphs of Miss Warner's 
mild heroines, in whose gentle hearts gastronomy and 
theology combined to defeat the world, the flesh and the 
devil, who in later years have been entertained 
heartily by Dickens, splendidly, and anon jovially, by 
Thackeray, or being true lovers of the best of all, have 
envied with Tom the large half of Maggie's tarts, or tasted 
with Mr. Pilgrim a glass of Mrs. Patton’s luscious cream — 
how, I say, shall we ask these to seat themselves, even in 
fancy, at a Goverick tea-table of eighteen seventy? 

Goverick did not read Brillat-Savarin, and would have 
found his dainty dishes little fit to set before the king. 

Mrs. White remarked of the lady who was in charge of 
the department of the interior that she never had a more 
willing girl than Ellen, and that for her part, she cared 
far more for cleanliness and willingness than for fine 
cooking. Which was fortunate. 

Mrs. White’s table-cloth was of dazzling purity ; her 
napkins shone with equal whiteness, save where a bright 
bar of red served to display yet more vividly their recent 
acquaintance with the laundry. Her china was white also, 
with a rim of gold. Her Britannia-metal tea service 
gleamed radiant. Her spoons — solid, these — were equally 
irreproachable. 

At that period in history the Goverick matron about to 
indulge in the favorite expression of hospitality known as 

tea a widely different affair from the ceremony which 
in later years came to be designated by the same word 
prefixed by “ afternoon ’’—always felt rise to her lips the 
words “ smoked beef ”. 

Smoked beef was th t piece de resistance for such festivities, 


SUPPER AND SAL PA 77 ON. 


35 


and, after all, there are worse morsels than a roll, salt 
and fragrant, composed of shaving after shaving of pale- 
red, damp, tender smoked beef, wound deftly on a fork. 

Lately, however, there had shot athwart the Goverick 
mind a consciousness of sardines, and while Mrs. White 
felt that she could hardly venture on the innovation of 
substituting those small fish for the time honored beef, she 
might for once rise to the height of providing both 
for the delectation of her guests. So two pickle-dishes of 
sardines flanked the parsley-garnished platter of smoked 
beef. There was another pickle-dish, put to its rightful 
use, nicely balancing the plate of American cheese, thin- 
sliced and pale in color. There were the inevitable pre- 
served peaches, and that triste delicacy, the stewed prune, in 
abundance. At each plate small glass saucers contained 
canned cherries, which gave a new and lively interest to 
the meal as each guest endeavored to avoid swallowing the 
pits, and to place them unobserved under the edge of the 
saucer. 

There was cake, of course, in abundance ; raisin cake, 
“ patty-pans ” and “ marble cake ”, a triumph of American 
art which always aroused Milly’s admiration and wonder as 
she slowly devoured the chocolate veins in the slabs of 
white. 

Mrs. Barron tucked her daughter’s napkin in at the chin, 
and covertly eyed the unwonted sardines. Mrs. Mercer 
swung her long coral ear-rings coquettishly, and Mr. 
Mercer, conscious of the scollop of dark, shiny hair on his 
forehead and the white flecked blueness of his cravat, felt 
himself a proper pendant to those ear-rings and their 
owner. 

Kitty turned timid looks of appeal toward her 
mother, whose housewifely pride in the appearance of the 
table was still somewhat obscured by maternal indignation, 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


3 6 

and refused to meet the glance of beseeching affecv 
tion. 

Mr. White’s heavy step was heard descending the stairs, 
and he entered with Mr. Barron, a delicate, careworn man, 
with a fatigued, sensitive face. Milly immediately rushed 
from her place to kiss papa, and was reproved by mamma 
with much severity. “ Milly, why couldn t you wait until 
papa came around here to kiss you ? It's all very well to be 
affectionate, but when I’ve taken so much care to smooth your 
dress before you sat down so that you wouldn t 
muss it, it’s too provoking to have you jump up in that 
way ! ” 

Milly ’s eyes filled with tears, according to their wont, 
under reproof. If she ever had any little girls of her own 
she would never scold them for any thing except telling lies 
and ill treating dogs and kittens. 

Ellen, capless and apronless, but rustling in an aggres- 
sively clean calico gown, and embellished with Milton- 
gold jewelry of much splendor, served the guests and 
enjoyed the conversation in a gratifying manner, her broad 
face being decked by a smile of great magnitude, occasion- 
ally deepening to the verge of a laugh. Mr. White fre- 
quently addressed to her a facetious remark on the quality 
of the food or the manner of her service, to which she 
always responded with much affability. She addressed 
Kitty and Milly by their Christian names without any 
prefix, with a fine unconsciousness of disrespect, and she 
referred always to Mr. White as “ himself ”. 

Himself was in fine spirits to-night, and led the conver- 
sation with much hilarity. He enjoyed a family party of 
all things, and was especially fond of the two sisters-in-law 
now present. 

“ You’ve given up your class in Sunday-school, Barron,” 
he said. “ That seems a pity.” 


SUPPER AX'D SALVATION. 


37 


“ I couldn’t keep it up any longer,” said Mr. Barron 
wearily. “ It’s all I can do to get to church twice on Sun- 
day. I must have some rest.” 

Oh, well, yes ; you must save your strength. But 
get it out some other way. It don’t do to scrimp on the 
Lord.” 

Mrs. White looked meekly distressed. Josiah was the 
best of men, but he had such a shocking way of saying 
things. She made no comment on the irreverent remark, 
but Mr. White knew he had offended. He adored his wife, 
and treated her with a patronizing tenderness held to be 
truly masculine. But in his secret heart he was a little 
afraid of her. 

“ That’s so, isn’t it, Lucy ? ” he asked, with an affection- 
ate smile designed to disarm this mute criticism. 

“ I think what you meant was all right, Josiah,” replied 
that pattern of women, ladling out the peaches with a care- 
ful hand, but from some subtle process of reasoning, refus- 
ing to eat any herself, as an act of self-denial calculated to 
heighten the moral effect of her unspoken reproof. 

Mr. White beamed rapturously on the assembled family. 
“ She knows what to say, that little woman,” he said, with 
proud satisfaction. “ You can’t catch her napping.” 

“ Are you going to prayer-meeting to-morrow, Lucy ? ” 
asked the little woman, feeling that, after all, an irreverent 
(though regenerate) husband, sensible of his faults and 
his wife's virtues, was the most endurable of life’s trials. 

“ Yes,” answered Mrs. Barron, “ and I shall take Milly 
with me. Several of her class in Sunday-school have had 
convictions, and I think she’s old enough to profit by this 
awakening.” 

“ Kitty has been attending the meetings for two weeks,” 
said Mrs. White. The two mothers looked tenderly at the 
pretty children. Kitty smiled sweetly, glad that mamma was 


3 * 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


no longer vexed with her, but Milly s face flushed painfully. 
With all her rash frankness of disposition she was yet 
capable of an exquisite reticence on subjects that were 
sacred to her, and, child as she was, the range of those sub- 
jects was sufficiently wide to include some not so regarded 
by many estimable people. 

It will, perhaps, be difficult for the cosmopolitan reader to 
understand the immense influence of evangelical religion in 
a community like that of Goverick, of which city the Har- 
rises may fairly be termed representative citizens. There 
is no nature so barren as to afford no fecund soil for the 
reception of some small, stray seed of romance, sending up 
in due season a pale and homely flower or two. To these 
people, whom circumstance has shut out from the splendid 
pageant in which the wealthy step to stately music, and 
whom native bias debars from sharing the rich advantages 
of the wide life of culture, there is an irresistible attraction 
in that school of theology which apparently allots to each 
one a leading part in the great drama of salvation. 

Even the Harrises, with their narrow personalities, their 
intense interest in small articles of furniture ; their minds 
where the perspective is like that of a hardware shop, much 
broken in upon by the obtrusion of utensils for domestic 
use, were beset by oddly mixed longings for the element of 
mystery in their bald lives here below, and the promise at 
least of spiritual predominance hereafter. 

Love had hovered over these plain homes, had dropped 
his seed in these prosaic hearts ; and for a season they 
were alive with blossoms of beauty. But when the rainbow- 
winged god had flown away from each wedded pair, the tinted 
flowers had fluttered to the ground, leaving behind whole- 
some fruit of solid affection and common interest indeed , 
but the hearts were kitchen-gardens again, no longer fairy 
bowers. The mysterious visitant from the land of dreams has 


SUPPER API) SAL VA 170 At. 


39 


been my guest, will be yours, and came to each of these 
homely people in turn. But when he flew off in his sweet, old, 
faithless fashion to other men and “ maidens choosing ”, the 
touch of poetry left their even lives. And, alas ! even a 
Harris must yearn for something more than “ portable prop- 
erty 

The solid mass of their honest belief in their own 
virtues was veined by a certain hard common-sense, 
which clearly perceived the existence of their superiors 
in a worldly sense. They had a hearty and ingenu- 
ous respect for riches, which was not in the least 
sycophantic, and they were pleasantly flattered by the notice 
of people who, by modest Goverick standards, were 
accounted wealthy. 

What could there be for people, whose lives presented 
internal conditions fatal to dramatic interest, and external 
limitations to any hope of social prominence, so full of 
promise, as a system which deliberately places its essen- 
tial elements outside the reach of human under- 
standing, and which offers to the lowliest a chance 
for competition in the most glorious rewards which Omni- 
potence can design in a celestial society where true worth, 
confirmed by saving grace, will find its legitimate sphere 
of being ? 

Quite aside from these abstract considerations, Milly’s 
mother and her sisters inherited their religious convictions 
from the parents, in whose minds they had crystallized under 
similar conditions, and who had bequeathed to their 
children these doctrines essential to salvation, together with 
profiles, irregular, but pleasing, transmitted from remote 
and probably unknown ancestors. 

The condemnation felt to be most scathing in the Harris 
family was that contained in the words, “ That wasn’t the 
way / was brought up,” and due concurrence, in the family 


40 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


faith was as sacred a duty as the preservation of the family 
china and silver. 

Mrs. Barron had, while yet in her teens, passed through 
the orthodox process of conversion, and a life not free from 
trial had been cheered and exalted by the belief in Divine 
guidance and assurance of final reward which had come to 
her in this spiritual crisis. What more natural than that a 
mother so devoted should wish her only child to share early 
in the blessings of a faith which at once secured eternal 
safety and present assistance. 

Milly’s precocious apprehension of things intellectual ap- 
parently extended to things spiritual, and her mother felt 
with thankful joy that the time for the “ new birth ” of her 
daughter was nigh. 

The tender-hearted, conscientious child was at times 
overwhelmed with a dread, lest she should die in her sins. 
The fear of a mysterious future where she should traverse 
endless circles of pain, made the blackness of her many 
waking hours at night lurid with terror. This girl of ten, 
an infant in her pleasures, was a woman in the capacity for 
suffering. To an imagination precociously informed and 
abnormally developed, she added the unreasoning credulity 
of her years. The gentle mother, picturing to the open- 
eyed baby the retribution awaiting the unregenerate, had 
not within herself the dramatic fancy which exaggerated 
with Calvinistic grimness every detail of torture, and she 
could never experience the appalled belief which came to 
inhabit the fervent soul of her small daughter. In the 
midst of the childish games and fanciful devices with which 
Milly filled her days, the haunting dread would come, and 
the poor child would rush away to pray with frantic tears 
that she might be saved. 

But here w as too noble a nature, even in the animal selfish- 
ness of childhood, to rest all the weight of spiritual 


SUPPER AND SALVATION. 


41 


interest on the mere fact of personal salvation. The pathetic 
picture of the crucifixion often obscured the terrific 
visions of the orthodox hell. A face, thorn-crowned, bleed- 
ing, benignant, beamed upon the child, and her fears for her- 
self were merged in remorse for the neglect she 
believed herself to be showing to the meek, incarnate 
Deity. 

The beautiful personality of Jesus appealed to the heart 
where the thought of any prodigal sacrifice found a ready 
home. 

This mingling of selfish fear and unselfish adoration of an 
ideal character made Milly’s religious experience up to the 
present time a less uncommon one than dull elders, unac- 
quainted with the spiritual exercises of exquisite children, 
will admit. But she could not speak of it to any one, her 
parents least of all, though perfectly aware of her mother’s 
semi-perception of her mental state. She shivered with 
uncontrollable distaste at the thought of mamma’s worded 
joy. Her whole little body scorched with a burning blush 
when she imagined her mother’s voice saying, “ Milly is 
seeking the Lord ”. 

These refinements of feeling when jarred upon, often 
produced in the child a spiritual nausea, which almost 
awakened its physical counterpart, and an intense revul- 
sion from all the things which stirred the more delicate 
impulses within her would seize and hurry her into the 
most contradictory moods. 

Among the untoward conditions of a family tea party, 
her mother’s reference to her supposed fitness for the 
reception of divine enlightenment suddenly produced in 
her a state of nervous caprice. 

“ I don’t want any more tea,” she said, shortly. “ I am 
going up-stairs ! ” 

What do you mean, Milly ? You have only eaten half a 


42 AS COMMON MORTALS. 

slice of bread and one pickle,” said Mrs. Barron, with mild 
irritation. 

“ I’ve had enough. I want to go up in the parlor and 
look out of the window.’' 

“ But you can’t. You haven’t had any preserves or 
cake.” 

“ Please let me go, mamma,” begged Milly, in a querulous, 
half-crying tone. 

“ She’ll be wanting something before she goes to bed 
unless she eats more now, Mary,” said Mrs. White. “ Have 
a peach, Milly ? ” 

“ I don’t want any,” said Milly, with passionate 
emphasis, pushing back her chair and preparing to run 
away. 

“ Mark, won’t you speak to this child ? ” said Mrs. Bar- 
ron, appealing to her husband. 

“ Milly, draw that chair up to the table and finish your 
supper ! ” said Mr. Barron, sternly. 

Milly never disobeyed papa, and she drew up her chair, 
choking down the impending sobs, and swallowing many 
tears with her suddenly imbittered bread. She listened, as 
in a nightmare, to the somewhat copious expression of Mr. 
White’s valuable opinions on local politics, to Aunt Lena’s 
interpolated strictures on a redingote worn by a too extrav- 
agant sister-in-law, to a low-toned discussion between her 
mother and Aunt Lucy with regard to the failings of Mrs. 
Barron’s “ up-stairs ” girl, and awaited the exodus from the 
dining-room with the eagerness of a sick prisoner for his day 
of leave. 

The longed for moment came at last, and Milly and 
Kitty were bidden to go and play nicely until they were 
called. Milly was glad for once to go away with Kitty, 
but when the little cousins were together in Kitty’s little 
room they made no movement toward the baby house or 


SUPPER A XD SALVA 770 AT. 


43 


the corner where Kitty’s toys were arranged in house- 
wifely order. 

They seated themselves on the little white bed, and 
looked off through the window to the west, deserted by 
the sun, who had left his courtiers, the crimson clouds, 
behind him. 

Kitty never jarred on Milly. As a child’s voice uttering 
sacred things in the ear of an elder, sounded Kitty’s sayings 
to her cousin. The simple, dutiful child, to whom spiritual 
struggle and filial disobedience were alike impossible, could 
not waken discord in the more sensitive soul. 

It therefore was only a relief from the tension of Milly’s 
overstrained feeling to hear the sweet little voice saying, 
in gentle, matter-of-fact tones, “ Are you a Christian, 
Milly?” 

“ No,” answered Milly, as simply. 

“ I am,” said little Kitty. 

“ Was it hard ? ” asked the other child in an awed whisper. 

“ No, indeed ! mamma wanted me to, and I asked Jesus 
to help me, and He did.” 

“ Are you sure you will go to Heaven, Kitty ? ” 

“ Why yes ! All Christians do.” 

“ I wish I was one.” 

“ Why don’t you be ? ” 

“ I’ve tried and I’ve prayed, but I can’t get the saved 
feeling.” 

“ We might pray now,” suggested Kitty, a little timidly. 

“You may,” said Milly, “ I can’t.” 

The two little creatures kneeled down by the bed set 
in the midst of childish toys, the momentous question of 
salvation bowing their curly heads in the attitude of peni- 
tence and supplication before they had learned the meaning 
of sin and suffering. 

“ Dear Lord,” pleaded Kitty, “ please make Milly a Chris- 


44 


AS COMM OX MORTALS. 


tian. She doesn’t know how, and Aunt Mary and Uncle 
Mark would like her to be, and I would, too. For Jesus’ 
sake. Amen.” 

“ Are you a Christian yet ? ” asked Kitty, with wistful 
tenderness, after a moment of expectant silence. 

“ No,” answered Milly, mournfully. 

“ Perhaps it’ll come to-morrow,” said Kitty, disappointed, 
but still hopeful. Then, after a few minutes dedicated to 
mute aspiration for the redemption of her unregenerate 
cousin, “ Shall we play with the dolls now, Milly ? ” 

Kitty was not conscious of any irreverence in thus passing 
from prayer to play. Both were a part of life. Mamma 
had wished her to be converted, and she had obediently 
sought the Lord and won the promised blessing. Mamma 
had bidden her play with the dolls, and she was ready to play. 
Life’s yoke was easy and its burden light to the docile 
child. After all, is this fantastic mingling of aspiration and 
amusement more common among children than their staid 
elders ? Only these honest, small souls have not yet learned 
to maintain a decent silence during the brief passage from 
spiritual struggle to mundane interest. 

Certain ingenuous mortals, however, preserve into their 
riper years this transparency with regard to their mental 
processes. I have heard a worthy and sincerely religious 
man, after praying with edifying zeal at the family altar, 
ask, before the amen was cold on his lips, “ Are the Joneses 
coming to tea to-night ? ” 

Poor humanity ! With eyes turned wistfully to the empty 
sky, with restless feet chained by nature’s law to earth until 
at last the tired body sleeps within the rolling globe. 
Who, seeing and sorrowing, wonders longer at the old stories 
which tell us how Gautama left his pleasures and pal- 
aces for the sake of a suffering world, how Mahomet 
fought for the truth as he conceived it, how Christ died ? ” 


CHAPTER V. 


milly’s oratory. 

O N the following evening Milly, with a decorous step 
adapted to the occasion, walked between her parents 
to the chapel where, on each Friday night, the Harrises 
thanked God they were not as other men. In Milly’s 
younger days she had thought the peculiar aroma always 
encountered at the chapel door must be the much quoted 
odor of sanctity. The familiar suggestion of damp hymn- 
books and new ingrain carpet met her nostrils now, and to 
her life’s end was associated with the first misdirected 
spiritual efforts of her childhood. 

The chapel was used as a Sabbath-school room, and on 
the walls, covered with a dismal stucco, hung many illumi- 
nated Scripture texts framed in black walnut. The floor 
was covered with red carpet, and cane-seated movable 
benches filled the room from the door to the raised plat- 
form where the reading desk stood, companioned by the 
instrument falsely called melodeon. 

The clergyman — minister, in Harris circles— was a middle- 
aged man, with a placid, benevolent face and kindly eves, 
well set beneath an insignificant forehead. The room was 
well filled, and all the members of the Harris family, save the 
recalcitrant Maria, were present. The clergyman opened 
the services by a short prayer, delivered with an earnest 
reverence that pleasantly assured the simple sincerity of the 
petitioner. He then said in a subdued voice, where the 
echo of the final amen still lingered, “ Sister Marshall, will 


4 6 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


you preside at the melodeon ? Our Brother Jackson is pre- 
vented by illness from being with us this evening.” 

A young woman with red cheeks and a profusion of very 
cylindrical brown curls cascading over her buxom shoulders, 
made her way up the aisle with studied unconsciousness and 
seated herself before the melodeon, which presently wailed 
out, after the fashion of melodeons, the plaintive music of 
the hymn, “ Sweet Hour of Prayer Years ago Milly had 
heard her mother sing that hymn as she sat in the twilight, 
rocking a tiny nephew to sleep and thinking of the little 
lads whose endless slumber needed no lullaby. The minor 
tones of Mrs. Barron’s voice, gentle in speech, became 
pathetic in song, and the mournful music broke Milly’s 
heart as she listened. It all came back to her now. She 
could see her own little figure looking drearily out of the 
window ; the inexpressibly lonely look of the sky ; the 
melancholy band of yellow light on the horizon ; the faint 
glimmer of an early star in the upper blue ; her mother’s 
figure dim in the darkening room, bending over the child 
in her arms. She could hear the slow creaking of the old 
rocking chair ; the crooning sorrow of the song. 

“ By thy return, Sweet Hour of Prayer,” rang the last 
refrain as the congregation was seated again, and with a 
heart wrung by a tender misery, Milly turned her wet eyes 
on the brother who now rose to address the meeting. 

He was an old man, ruddy of countenance, frank of 
speech. “ Brethren,” he said, in tones that held something 
of sailor-like bluffness, “ as I came up here to-night, it 
came across me all at once that all of us, you and me and 
the rest, warn t coming here in the right spirit. We’re all 
of us anxious about our souls, and reason enough. Some 
of us want to be saved. Some of us — bless the Lord for 
all His mercies ! are saved and want to be perfected before 
we go hence. We don’t want to be saved as by fire. Or, 


MILL YS ORA TOR Y. 


47 


p’r’aps, we're forgetting ourselves for a little and praying 
for the salvation of our children and friends and loved 
companions. Well, seems to me that state of mind is even 
better than the other, though I ain’t denying the necessity 
of the first. But it struck me that any of us warn’t much con- 
cerned with the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. We take what 
He’s done for us and say, ‘ Thank you, Lord,’ and go to 
work to make sure of salvation as we can. I don’t say that 
ain’t right, brethren and sisters, but I do say that it would 
be more Christian of us to think a little of what it cost the 
blessed Lord to leave His home in glory, and come down 
to this miserable sin-stained earth to die for us on the shame- 
ful cross. We want to save our souls alive because we’re 
afraid of the torments of hell or because we want to make 
sure of the joys of heaven ; not because we mean that 
Christ’s sacrifice for us shan’t* be in vain. There is a 
blessed time of awakening here ; young lambs are being 
gathered into the fold, and old sinners are turned from 
their wanderings. I want to say to you to-night, you young 
inquirers, most of all, don’t pray that you may be converted 
for the sake of your father or your mother or your own soul 
even, but for the sake of the blessed Lord who gave Him- 
self for you.” 

Milly had listened to many exhortations in this place, 
only dimly troubled by the sounds that were so much 
fainter than the voice in her own soul, but at the simple 
words of the old man, with their rugged appeal to the more 
generous impulses of the heart, a self-reproachful pang 
shot through her. It was the legitimate result of her relig- 
ious training that she should believe herself to be person- 
ally responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, and the sense 
of hideous ingratitude for the services of that patient mar- 
tyr pierced her soul anew. 

“ Must Jesus bear the cross alone, 

And all the world go free?” 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


sang the congregation. “ Oh, no ! ” thought little Milly, 
her whole being melted into love and sorrow. “ Dear God, 
please make me a Christian for Christ’s sake.” 

A tall man with a narrow face now rose and expatiated 
at length on the sin of dancing, concluding with a bilious 
warning to those who were tripping the light fantastic toe 
down the broad road to destruction. Milly did not hear 
him, nor her Uncle Elkins’s voice in prayer, expressing a 
conviction that he was the vilest of mankind, with a certain 
condescension in thus frankly owning that he accompanied 
the rest of the human race in Adam’s fall, which he felt 
must be very touching to those who knew him and were 
cognizant of his general and particular worth. 

After several more prayers and addresses, interspersed 
with awful and depressing pauses, broken by pensive coughs 
which seemed to intimate that any movement of the Spirit 
would be welcome, the mild clergyman addressed the 
“ inquirers ”. 

“ Will those who desire to become Christians and win 
life everlasting please rise in their seats, that they may be 
noted and special petitions offered for them ? ” 

Milly’s heart throbbed with a violence that whitened her 
face and caused her curls to vibrate like grape tendrils 
after a gust of wind. With an imploring look, directed 
straight before her, she rose. There were perhaps a dozen 
people standing, young men and girls from fifteen to twenty 
years, and one rather unpromising penitent of fifty. There 
were prayers offered and hymns sung anew, and Milly was 
seated again, her face hidden in her hands, afraid to look 
at her mother lest she should see the tears in her eyes, but 
gratefully conscious of her father’s hand resting tenderly 
on her shoulder. 

In her heart was a strange, mystical joy, a belief, firm as 
her childish trust in Santa Claus and far more profound. 


MILL YS ORA TOR Y. 


49 


that Christ was conscious of her identification of herself 
with His people and her avowed acceptance of His sacrifice. 

At the conclusion of the meeting many people gathered 
around her and her parents. “ You are a happy man 
to-night, Brother Barron,” said a solemn black-haired man. 
“ That this dear child should so early seek the Lord is a 
blessing indeed.” 

Several women kissed Milly, and more than one wept as 
they quoted, “They that seek Me early shall find Me ”. 

In the midst of her thrilling, spiritual rapture, Milly 
experienced much childish pride in her new importance. 

A sense of promotion filled her when she heard herself 
for the first time fraternally addressed as “ sister ”. The 
intense craving for approbation which lay at the root of 
many of her actions was satisfied in the same moment with 
higher needs. The need for predominance in her nature 
did not take shape in desire to control others, but the dra- 
matic child was conscious of an imperious personality, which 
claimed as a right the central place in any scene where she 
might figure. The sweet little egotist was honest to the 
core, despite the complex nature which, contrasted with the 
homogeneous simplicity of the coarser-fibered souls about 
her, gave the effect of insincerity to what was only the 
exquisite subtlety of her mental processes. It is these 
natures which sometimes make the world’s heroes, oftener 
its martyrs. No man ever yet died nobly for the truth who 
was not swept along to death on the wave of belief in the 
importance of his personal sacrifice. It is only kings ana 
rulers who may abdicate, and it is only those conscious o i 
a strenuous self, who, lifting to their lips the cup of a 
splendid resignation, drain to the last dregs the unspeakable 
bitterness within. 

The final hymn was sung and the Barrons wended their 
way home. Milly walked on air. Love, divitie and human, 


5 ° 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


encompassed her. She thought it highly probable that in 
heaven there was joy over her as a promising brand 
snatched from the burning ; the joy on earth, represented 
by the Wentworth Street Presbyterian Church, was only 
natural. 

Mr. Barron was very silent as they walked along, catch- 
ing as they passed a street lamp a glimpse of light on the 
young, rapt face. 

“ Milly,” said Mrs. Barron suddenly, “ what was Mrs. 
Merton saying to you ? ” 

A blush crimsoned the pale cheeks, and in low, almost 
inarticulate tones, the child murmured, “ She said, ‘ He shall 
gather the lambs in His arms and carry them in his bosom 

Mrs. Barron was slightly deaf, and in tones sharpened by 
unsatisfied curiosity, exclaimed: “ What? Do try and 
speak more distinctly.” An uncontrollable sense of dese- 
cration swept through Milly and up to her lips in sobs. It 
was terrible to have to repeat those words which had seemed 
to her to refer less to herself than to the little daughter 
whom Mrs. Merton had left not long ago on a lonely slope 
in Greenwood. Her nervous distaste would scarcely have 
been less had she seen a careless hand drawing back the 
winding sheet from the nude body of the dead child. 

“ Don’t speak to me that way now, mamma. I can’t bear 
it ! ” she cried. 

“ The child is in no mood for talking,” said her father, in 
a low voice. 

Mrs. Barron bridled a little. She bowed herself to 
Mark’s judgment in most matters, but in the government 
of her own child she felt the mother’s claim to be para- 
mount, and the acuteness of the maternal comprehension 
unquestionable. The husband might interfere only when 
requested. 

Milly was mute as they entered the house, and kissed 


MILL Y’S ORA TOR Y. 


51 


her parents good-night with unwonted silence. She has- 
tened to her own little room and seated herself on the side 
of the bed, alone with herself and God, as in baby grand- 
iloquence she termed it. The shocked irritation subsided. 
The little heart throbbed and burned as it floated upward 
on the waves of a mysterious exaltation. Oh, for the days 
of rack and stake that she might die for the Lord who had 
redeemed her ! Oh, that she were old enough to embark 
on a mission for the conversion of the heathen ! 

No consciousness of the geographical determination of 
her faith marred this simple ecstasy ; no hint that on the 
other side of the world young Buddhist zetetics might aspire 
to correct the errors of occidental sinners, as truly heathen 
in their sight. 

Vague, dazzling dreams beset her, of emulating those 
wonderful children of whom she had read, whose words of 
celestial wisdom turned hardened culprits from the path of 
destruction, who lived in the enjoyment of special Divine 
favor and died triumphant, seeing the gates of heaven ajar 
for their reception long before the breath left their frail 
bodies. She was in the midst of a reverie wherein she pic- 
tured herself lying white and radiant on that very bed, sur- 
rounded by weeping friends and relatives, whom, by her 
unearthly oratory she should win to a more complete love 
and service, before the escort of angels should appear to 
convey her to more congenial scenes, when her mother 
entered. 

“ Milly, you ought to be in bed,” she said, reprovingly. 

“I’ll go soon; goodnight, mamma,” said Milly, the 
hearty, honest child-love welling up within her and sub- 
merging the mystical aspirations as she threw her slender 
arms around her mother’s neck and pressed her fresh lips 
*** the cheek that maternal cares had faded a bit. 

“ Mamma,” she called, as Mrs. Barron left the room, 


5 2 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“may I sit up just half an hour longer? You know I 
haven’t got to go to school to-morrow.” 

“Well, just this once, Milly,” answered the mother, 
unable to deny the child any thing to-night. 

In the course of Milly’s reading she had become 
familiarized with many things not likely to be encountered 
in her daily life. She had thus gained the idea that the 
Roman Catholics, for whom she would now pray more 
earnestly than ever, were given to the observance of certain 
customs which commended themselves to her poetic sen- 
sibility. 

“ There are some good people among them,” she said to 
herself. “I can’t believe but what those ones will go to heaven. 
Any way they are better than the Jews, for they love Jesus. 
I think some of the things they do are beautiful. I mean to 
have an oratory, like Marie in that lovely French story.” 

Behold, then, the child who had just sounded spiritual 
depths unknown to her elders, seated on the floor before an 
old washstand, relic of the days before the Barrons had 
moved into a house with running water on every floor. This 
washstand, divided within into three compartments, had 
been used by Milly for a baby-house, comprising bed-room, 
parlor, and kitchen ; dolls being happily exempt from the 
human necessity of dining. Little as she cared for her dolls, 
she had apparently consulted their comfort in every par- 
ticular, and she had been rather proud of her skill in fitting 
up this mimic dwelling, having shown an ingenuity sur- 
prising to her mother, who had believed her child sadly 
destitute of practical ability. 

She despoiled it now with unflinching hand, of all her 
childish treasures, and, going to the closet, brought out, with 
many a tug, an old trunk-shaped box which contained her 
choicest possessions. She had papered the sides—walls 
she called them— of the baby-house with white, unruled 


MILL Y'S ORA TOR Y. 


S3 


writing-paper, which with infinite care and trouble she had 
ornamented with decalcomanie roses. This paper she con- 
sidered sufficiently appropriate to the future destiny of the 
baby-house. From her bureau drawer she brought her best 
handkerchief, which, being daintily embroidered in pure 
white, she regarded as worthy to replace the piece of vel- 
veteen which had served as carpet in the parlor, now to be 
consecrated as an oratory. Then from the old trunk she 
drew a block of marble about four inches square, which had 
once served as pedestal for a vase, that had long since met 
with the usual destiny of vases. On this block she laid her 
little red Bible, and placed it as an altar in the center >( the 
tiny room. Now the time came for her to devote ho most 
precious possession to the Lord, and she carefully m /oiled 
a winding mass of tissue-paper which finally disclosed an 
irregular piece of brocade, of a faint rose tint, veined by 
glittering silver threads. This hoarded scrap of beauty nad 
been given her by her Aunt Gertrude’s dressmaker, who 
was superintending the trousseau of a patrician bride. No 
adequate expression of the delight of the child in the 
exquisite color and texture of this beautiful fabric could be 
given. She hung over it with parted lips ; she stroked it 
with dainty fingers. Her admiration was untainted by the 
vulgarity of a wish to have a dress made of it. Ruskin has 
said that the utmost possible beauty of color is found in a 
pale, warm red, and Milly agreed with him, unconsciously 
enough at that stage of her existence. She certainly thought 
the phrase “ pink of perfection ” a natural manner of 
expressing the fact that no higher superlative could be 
found than the word denoting the color, at once delicate 
and intense, which seemed to throb in her bit of bro- 
cade. 

“ It isn’t a very deep pink,” she murmured, with a con- 
fused idea, born of her ascetic Protestant training, that 


54 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


white only should be used for the expression of religious 
ideas. 

In a tiny carved frame on the mantle was a small photo- 
graph of Ary Scheffer’s beautiful picture representing the 
melancholy, benignant man of sorrows, tenderly inclining to 
the beloved disciple bowed on his breast. 

Milly took this down with reverent fingers and hung it on 
the wall of her mimic oratory, then, beneath it, the pink 
brocade, and never was votive offering tendered with more 
of sincere religious homage than the bit of finery hung by 
the slender hands of Mrs. Barron’s small daughter. 

From the trunk she now took a little box containing four 
tiny pink tapers, saved from the last Christmas tree, which 
she set in toy candlesticks before the picture and her 
offering. Marie in the French story had had a picture of 
the Christ in her oratory, and an altar, and candles burning 
night and day. This had supplemented Milly’s scanty 
information on the subject of oratories, but the idea of 
devoting her cherished piece of brocade to the service of 
God, apparently spontaneous in her own breast, was but a 
repetition of the old, old idea obtaining in every age, in every 
clime, in every form of religion, from the savage, desert 
wanderer, leading forth the best nourished of his scanty 
flock to be consumed on an uncouth altar, to the peasant 
in Latin countries, expending his painfully hoarded small 
coins in the purchase of painted candles to burn before a 
rude image of the Virgin Mary, and on to the New England 
farmer, saving from his meager subsistence, wrung from an 
unkindly soil, from year to year a pitiful sum, that in the 
end he may send his best and brightest son to preach what 
he believes to be the only gospel in the dull ears of dusky 
listeners, and to lie at last in a forgotten grave in an alien 
land. The old, old idea of sacrifice, which impels to the 
offering of the dearest treasure, whether in trembling pro- 


MILL VS ORATORY. 


55 


pitiation of an inscrutably offended Deity, or in that finer 
impulse, which, stirred by the thought of an ideal Goodness, 
will move the hand to break its own chosen staff that the 
whole being may become prostrate in joyful resignation 
before that glorious conception. 

Milly placed in one corner of her oratory a piece of white 
spar, in the other a cluster of artificial lilies of the valley, 
then, drawing from her finger a tiny turquoise ring, her 
father’s birthday gift to her, she laid it on the little red Bible 
and felt her sacrifice to be complete. 


CHAPTER VI. 


MISS REESE. 

W ITHOUT the relation of the incident with which the 
foregoing chapter closes, the history of Millicent would 
be incomplete. No other single act of those early days 
serves so well to express the effort of a nature, artistically 
urgent, to work out its own salvation against limitations, 
material and spiritual, dimly apprehended in childhood, 
bitterly accepted in later years. 

An ardent desire for beauty and completeness in the out- 
ward forms of life, as in its inner workings, guided the hand 
that arranged the absurd little oratory where Milly certainly 
could not enter to pray, but where, each night, she paused 
before the open door to offer her innocent petitions. She 
could not have a real oratory, but imagination, a friend 
faithful for many years, supplied the indispensable details, 
and Milly felt no lack. 

• She and little Kitty united with the church on the same 
day, and their Cousin Helen was also received into the fel- 
lowship of the same body. At the conclusion of the serv- 
ices Milly rushed up to Helen, moved by a loving impulse 
and a happy sense that all henceforth would be smooth 
between them. 

They were united now by a closer bond than the tie of 
blood indicating merely earthly kinship. 

“ Helen, darling, we will always love each other now !” 
-she cried, heroically resolving to consider the scarlet sin of 
robbing the hungry dog to be washed white as snow. 


MISS REESE. 


57 


Helen was a fair, serene child, with narrow gray eyes, 
that measured Milly with much acuteness. 

“ Of course,” she said, primly. Milly was disheart- 
ened. 

“ If I’ve ever been mean to you I hope you'll forgive me,” 
she said, unable to accept their new spiritual situation as a 
matter of course. 

“ I will,” said Helen’s even voice, and Milly was obliged 
to be content. 

To the reader unfamiliar with Goverick methods, educa- 
tional and otherwise, it may appear grotesquely unnatural 
that Milly’s relatives should simultaneously desire her to 
seek her dolls and the Lord. That a child, of years so 
tender as to render her indifference to the normal toys of 
tiny maidens a matter of regret, should be expected to settle 
the tremendous question of her spiritual destiny for all eter- 
nity, may seem even shocking, but those who have even a 
casual acquaintance with the Sunday-school literature still 
in vogue, will admit that this apparent anomaly has its war- 
rant in fiction, while the social student resident in Goverick 
and communities of a like order can give ample assurance 
of its existence in fact. 

The fervor of Milly’s faith did not entirely abate as the 
years passed on, and from a graceful child she became an 
overgrown girl, studious, awkward, sensitive. She kept up 
the habit of praying each night at the door of her little ora- 
tory much longer than any one knew. In her classes at 
school she became noted as a brilliant, though unequal 
scholar. In some studies her excellence was phenomenal ; 
in others below the average. 

The pursuit of knowledge was somewhat interrupted by 
her intense friendships, which diverted from study the 
energy which became affection. So in love, study and 
prayer, interspersed with the childish^devices and diversions 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


58 

of her age and circumstance, the years carried her on to 
her sixteenth birthday. 

“ Mamma,” said Milly, one blazing day in the June of the 
Centennial year, u I must go and tell Helen that I can not 
take her mission class while she is away.” 

“ It’s too hot for you to go out, Milly,” said Mrs. Barron, 
in the old tone of mild reproof. 

“ I can’t help it. It’s my only chance, and if it isn’t done 
to-day it won’t be done at all.” 

Mrs. Barron always opposed her daughter as a matter of 
principle, and yielded as a matter of practice, so Milly stepped 
out into the dazzling light and cruel heat of the June day. 

The green-shaded gloom of tightly closed shutters made 
Mrs. Elkins’s stiff parlor for once attractive, and it was 
moments before Milly’s eyes became sufficiently accustomed 
to the darkened room to perceive that a lady was seated 
opposite her ; a stranger, and, even in this dim light, beau- 
tiful, Milly decided. 

Helen’s trim little figure soon entered, daintily fresh, as 
usual, in her light summer gown. 

“ Mamma will be down in a few minutes, Miss Reese,” she 
said, addressing the stranger. “ Milly, what brought you 
out to-day ? I know how you hate hot weather.” 

“ I came to tell you about the mission class, Helen. I 
shall not be able to take it,” said Milly, watching the lovely 
lady furtively. 

“ Miss Reese, this is my cousin, Millicent Barron,” said 
Helen. 

“ I have heard of you,” said the lady to Milly, in a rich 
voice. “ Heard you, I might say. Are you not the 
young lady who read a composition on ‘ Folk-Lore ’ at Dr. 
Eastin’s last commencement ? ” 

“ Yes > ma’am,” answered Milly, shyly, and coloring with 
delight. 


a 


MISS REESE. 


59 


“ I am so glad to meet you,” pursued Miss Reese, “ for I 
want to know you better. It seemed to me that for one so 
young you advanced ideas that were marvelous, really mar- 
velous. I must ask Miss Elkins ” — and she turned to Helen 
with a charming smile — “ if she will not bring you to see 
me.” 

“ I shall be very glad,” replied Helen, without enthu- 
siasm. 

Mrs. Elkins entered, her sallow face wearing its wonted 
expression of distress. 

“ How do you do, Miss Reese,” she said, plaintively. “ I 
suppose you came to see about the fair. Of course ” — 
with a nervous laugh — “ I know it isn’t likely you came to 
see me.” 

“ But indeed I did,” answered Miss Reese, graciously, 
“ and if I speak about the fair it is only because I am so 
deeply interested in it, and know that you are the one to 
consult if I am to learn definitely about it.” 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Elkins, mollified, “ I am so worked to 
death that I can scarcely get things clear in my head — 
Milly; how’s your mother ?— but I’ll tell you all I can. 
Helen, you take Milly up to my room. The pattern for that 
polonaise is spread out on the bed, and I want you to 
explain about it to her before ^ roll it up to send to her 
mother. Of course, Milly’ll forget about it before she’s 
gone a block, but I promised Mary.” 

“ One moment, please,” said Miss Reese, as the young 
girls were about to leave the room, “ Miss Helen, when will 
you bring your cousin to see me ? ” 

“ I can not say, Miss Reese ; we are so busy getting ready 
to go away, that I have very little time to spare.” 

“ Perhaps, then,” said Miss Reese, turning to Milly, “ you 
will brave me all alone. I live at twenty-three Peabody 
Street, and shall hope to see you there very soon,” 


6o 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 

• 

She extended a large, shapely white hand to Milly, as she 
spoke, and the pleased girl left the room with a sense of 
being the recipient of royal favor. 

“ Who is that lovely creature ? ” she asked of Helen, as 
soon as they were out of hearing. 

“ Miss Reese.” 

" Of course, I know that, but who is Miss Reese ? ” 

“ She is no one, and nothing else that I know of.” 

" I think she is perfectly lovely.” 

“ Do you ? ” 

“ Don’t you ? ” 

“ Not particularly. She is handsome enough, but she has 
all sorts of queer ideas. She has a lovely house, but no one 
is ever there but a lot of crazy people with wild notions.” 

“ Why, what do you mean ? ” 

“ Oh, she believes in women’s rights, and table-tipping 
and all sorts of horrid things.” 

“ I don't believe it,” cried Milly, shocked at the attribu- 
tion of these unpopular beliefs to the lovely woman who had 
completely fascinated her susceptible little heart. 

“ You may believe it or not, just as you choose. Here is 
the polonaise pattern. This seam must be cut off on the 
shoulder, and the sleeve wants shortening. Tell Aunt 
Mary not to cut it quite so high in the back of the neck, or 
it will wrinkle.” 

“ Do you think she really wants me to come and see 
her ? ” 

“Who? Miss Reese? I’m sure I don’t know. I wish 
you would pay attention to the pattern, Milly. I don’t wish 
to tell the thing all over again,” 

I never can remember it, Helen, if you tell me fifty 
times. Can’t you write it ? ” 

Certainly, said Helen, coldly. “ I should think you 
might take a little interest in these things, however,” 


MISS REESE. 


61 


Mrs. Elkins entered. “ Have you told her about the 
polonaise ? ” she asked. 

“ I've written it,” answered Helen, shortly. “ We’re 
going to Aunt Lucy’s, mamma.” 

“ Won’t you go with us, Aunt Sarah ? ” asked Milly. 

“ No, thank you, Milly. It’s a fortnight since Lucy’s been 
here. I know it’s natural she shouldn’t care to visit in this 
plain home, now she’s got that fine house, but I hope 
I’ve got proper pride. Even between sisters there are some 
things that can’t be got over. If Lucy wants to see me she 
knows where to find me. I’m not going there twice to her 
once here.” 

Helen’s gentle face expressed a coldness so intense that 
her mother tried to destroy the evident effect of her words 
by a faint, embarrassed laugh. 

But Milly’s heart melted. Aunt Sarah was not interest- 
ing, certainly, but a tender pity for the narrow soul, denied 
the material blessings which would so completely have filled 
it, moved her. 

“Aunt Lucy is always so busy, you know,” she said, 
kissing the faded cheek. 

“ She has a good deal more to look after in the way of 
rooms and furniture, if that’s what you mean, but she has 
fewer cares with her small family and three servants,” said 
Mrs. Elkins, unconsoled. 

“ Oh dear,” said Milly, “ mamma is always saying that 
servants are the worst part of housekeeping.” 

“ All parts are bad enough,” said Mrs. Elkins, irritably. 

“ Don’t you get sick of it all, Helen ? ” asked Milly as they 
stepped into the outer glare. 

“ Of what all ? ” 

“ Oh, of the housekeeping talk, and the worries about 
servants and china and dusting, and the rest of it.” 

“ Other kinds of talk are just as tiresome.” 


62 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


« I have not had much chance to try the other kinds." 

“ You had better go and see Miss Reese. You will be sure 
to hear another kind there.” 

“ Then I’ll go.” 

The girls walked slowly through the streets, only hasten- 
ing their steps when a gap in the buildings brought them 
from the shadow of the houses into the intolerable heat of 
a burning band of sunlight. 

With sighs of relief they mounted the brown stone steps 
leading up to Mrs. White’s door, whereon the newest of 
silver plates announced in the clearest of letters the name 
of the owner and occupant. The new house was a marvel 
of size, neatness and completeness of appointment, but no 
sweeping width of brocatelle curtains, no polished rosewood 
of chair or table, no plush indication that the goal of 
elegance in lambrequins had been reached at last could 
give a look of habitation and home to the solemn parlor 
where Mrs. White welcomed her nieces. 

“ It is very nice of you to come and see me this hot 
day,” she said, kissing them. “ Kitty went to your Aunt 
Maria’s early this morning and hasn’t come home yet. 
How did you leave your mother, Helen ? ” 

“ I left her talking to Miss Reese,” replied Helen 
neatly. 

“ Do you know her, Aunt Lucy? Isn’t she lovely?” 
cried Milly eagerly. 

“ She is a very handsome looking lady,” replied Mrs. 
White, guardedly. 

“ Oh yes, and so sweet ! She asked me to come and see 
her, and I shall go just as soon as I can— decently.” 

Mrs. White was mute. 

“ Where did you meet her, Aunt Lucy ? Does Kitty 
know her ? ” 

u We met her — your Aunt Sarah and I — at the Home for 


MISS REESE. 


63 


Disabled Seamstresses. Our church is to have a table at 
their fair and she belongs to some woman’s society which is 
to have a table also. Kitty does not know her. I hope 
she will not meet her. I should be very sorry to have her 
intimate with any one like Miss Reese.” 

“ Do you believe she is a spiritualist and all of those 
things ?” 

“ I don’t know any thing about her, Milly. She isn’t my 
idea of a Christian, though I must say she has nice manners, 
and I don’t care to see any more of her.” 

“ What does she do that is unchristian ? ” asked Milly, 
with a sense of personal affront. 

“ You must ask some one else.” 

“ But Aunt Lucy ! If you know any thing dreadful about 
her you ought to tell me. Not that I believe there is any 
thing dreadful.” 

“ Then there is no necessity for me to tell you.” 

“ I didn’t mean I shouldn’t believe you, aunty. I only 
thought you might be misled by some one who dislikes 
her.” 

“ I am not apt to be deceived in that way. I simply 
shouldn’t like to have my Kitty hear the things she 
says about women’s rights and seances and other unfem- 
inine things.” 

“ I don’t see why seances should be unfeminine. They 
are nonsense, I know, but why unfeminine. The spirits 
are supposed to be of both sexes, aren’t they? I don’t see 
why you think spiritualism is improper for a lady, though 
of course it is silly for any one.” 

“I didn’t suppose 702/ would see, Milly. Helen, how is 
Bertie’s cough ? ” 

“ But, Aunt Lucy,” said Milly, with a sense of frustration, 
“ is there really any thing wrong about Miss Reese ? Any 
thing that mamma ought to know ? ” 


64 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ To my thinking there are several things wrong about 
her, but your mother might not agree with me about let- 
ting you visit her. She has different ideas from mine about 
managing her children.” 

No words can express the severity of condemnation con- 
veyed by Mrs. White’s tones. Ideas on any subject, from 
the fluting of ruffles to the salvation of souls, differing from 
her own remarkable views were necessarily rankly hereti- 
cal. Any thing like argument always produced in her a 
sense of injury, and she composed her small features into 
an expression of meek forbearance and proceeded to ques- 
tion Helen as to the health of the Elkins family, collect- 
ively and individually, waiving the former subject of dis- 
cussion with marked, though gentle, ostentation. 

Milly sat still, apparently studying the engravings of the 
“ Voyage of Life ”, which in four ponderous gilt frames 
ornamented the walls at regular intervals. She was vaguely 
but unmistakably irritated. The old, wretched feeling of 
being all wrong always rushed upon her in full force when 
in Aunt Lucy’s presence. Contemptible as the clever girl 
had inevitably discovered her aunt’s mental powers to be, 
barren in sympathy as the rich young heart had found her, 
Mrs. White was yet a force, representing as she did in her 
marked possession of the Harris characteristics the family 
to which blood bound Milly hopelessly, and which affection, 
born in the blood, forbade her to ignore in the arrangement 
of her life. All the help and the hindrance of kinship was 
expressed by the quietly venomous little woman who ham- 
pered the growing soul of the young girl by the iron frame 
of opinions uttered in a voice to which Milly listened, 
angered but subdued, for in its even tones there lurked a 
cadence of her mother’s. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE FRIEND OF HER SOUL. 

M RS. BARRON soon proved the truth of Mrs. White’s 
words, and gave ample evidence of the failure of her 
maternal methods to come up to the standard set by that 
estimable lady by readily according to Milly the desired 
permission to call upon Miss Reese. Milly found easily 
the house, but a sudden access of shyness caused her to 
walk past it and around the block several times before she 
ventured to ascend the steps and ring the bell. The par- 
lor into which she was ushered reminded her strongly ol 
its mistress. The air of careless richness conspicuous in 
Miss Reese’s dress was to be observed in the furnishing of 
her house. A sort of splendid slovenliness pervaded the 
fine old room, with its pictures, statuettes and ornaments 
lightly veiled by a delicate bloom of dust. 

To the enchanted Milly this trifling defect was as naught. 
To her eyes, long accustomed to the inexpensive pretti- 
ness of her mother’s rooms, the stiff simplicity of Mrs. 
Elkins’s house, and the costly ugliness at Mrs. White’s, 
the profusion of beautiful objects gave her an impression 
of regal magnificence. Her satisfaction would receive no 
warrant from the esthetic taste of the present day. Primary 
colors reigned supreme. The mantle was a mass of marble 
fruit, and a looking glass was fitted into the space beneath, 
now consecrated to an open fire-place, or at least a “ gas 
log ”. Plaster stalactites hung from the ceiling, tinted in 
glowing hues. The Moquette roses strewn before the feet 


66 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


of the visitor were matched by those on the brocade win- 
dow curtains. The piano gratified more than one artistic 
taste, for over the maker’s name was a little painting, inlaid 
with mother-of-pearl, and great Japanese jars filled with 
crystallized grasses stood on the cover. But there were 
lovely shapes in bronze and marble, and engravings and 
chromos were supplanted by genuine and excellent paint- 
ings. Milly’s quick eyes were familiarizing themselves 
with the precious trifles on a tall carved “ what-not ” resplend- 
ent with mirrors, when Miss Reese entered, her large, 
near-sighted blue eyes peering about in an amiable distrac- 
tion as she vainly fumbled for her eye-glasses. She was 
dressed, as on the previous occasion of Milly’s meeting 
with her, in rich garments of the latest fashion of the 
preceding year and looked remarkably handsome. Her 
heavy yellow hair was piled in a knot, at once tight and 
untidy on the top of her fine head, and her full, widely 
smiling lips disclosed delicate little teeth. 

“ My dear child, this is so very kind of you,” she said, 
with bland fervor, clasping Milly’s hand, and* as if by a 
sudden impulse, bending forward to kiss her. 

“ I wanted very much to come. I hope it is not too 
soon,” said Milly, blushing and awkward. 

“ No, indeed ! You could not have come too soon to 
please me. Now sit right down here by me and tell me where 
you picked up those ideas which your clever little brain set 
into such a charming mosaic on that Commencement 
day ? ” 

“ Charming mosaic ! How lovely ! ” thought Milly. 

“ I don’t know, Miss Reese, except by finding out as much 
as I could about the peasant lore of various countries. I 
got such books as I could from the library on Wilson 
Street. It was all very incomplete,” she said aloud. 

“ But where did a child of your age gain the insight that 


THE FRIEND OF HER SOUL. 67 

enabled you to discern the grain of truth that is the founda- 
tion of all these wild tales ? ” 

“ I don’t think I did discern that, ma’am. I only meant 
to give the idea that there is a basis of truth in all fable 
the benefit of the doubt.” 

“ The benefit of the doubt ? ” said Miss Reese, mourn- 
fully. “ Oh, my dear ! With those eyes you must see more 
clearly than that would imply. But I forget that you are a 
mere child. How old are you ? ” 

“ Sixteen, almost seventeen. At least, I shall be seven- 
teen in six months.” 

“ Well, you are wonderfully developed for your years. 
You will grow like a tropical plant. And I shall foster that 
growth, for I felt, my dear, in meeting you, that irresistible 
influences were drawing us together. We shall be of use 
to each other.” 

Milly was deliciously flattered. It had been her sad fate, 
so far, to love vehemently and generously, and to receive 
but aTscanty meed of affection in return from all save the 
faithful father and mother, to the sluggish current of whose 
lives the spring of her fresh young being gave a new impe- 
tus. That this beautiful woman should be drawn to her 
without any effort of her own, that she should express her- 
self in terms “ so like a book ”, thought romantic Milly, 
was an experience new and enchanting. 

“ I am so glad ! ” she said naively. 

“ Tell me,” said Miss Reese, with what would have been 
abruptness in one less mellow of voice and manner than her- 
self, “ what are your religious convictions ? ” 

“ I am a member of the Wentworth Street Presbyterian 
Church,” said Milly, a little startled. “ And papa is, and 
mamma. I joined when I was not quite ten years old.” 
“ And you still remain in that faith ? ” 

“ Certainly,” answered Milly. Then, with a fervor which 


68 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


she felt at last able to expand in a congenial atmosphere, 
“ I shall remain so until I die — and after.” 

“ Oh, you think so,” said Miss Reese, with a mysterious 
smile, “ but I know better ! ” 

“ What are you ? ” asked the alarmed Milly, a question 
always understood in Goverick to express the desire of the 
interlocutor to ascertain the sectarian bias of the one ques- 
tioned. 

“ I transcendental,” replied Miss Reese, with real 
simplicity oddly at variance with the imposing word. 

Milly did not in the least understand, but she would rather 
have died than reveal to this beautiful being her ignorance of 
the meaning of the word which probably indicated the source 
of all this ideal loveliness of character, so she waited with 
parted lips for further knowledge, much cheered by the 
reflection that “ transcendental ” did not recall to her 
mind any of the theories or practices singled out by her 
mother and aunts for special reprobation. 

“ Have you never felt within yourself a desire for a higher 
life, a more complete existence than you enjoy at present ? ” 
asked Miss Reese, earnestly. 

“ Indeed I have ! ” answered Milly ardently. 

“ There is a higher life to be lived while yet in the body,” 
said the lady, smiling benignantly on the young, flushed 
face. “ I shall perhaps be permitted to lead you to that 
more exalted path. Let us now talk of other things. I 
would first know where you stand.” 

Milly, bewildered, delighted, almost frightened at this 
sudden new happiness, obeyed, and told as well as she could 
the simple story of her daily life. 

lhat Miss Reese's interest was not likely to survive a 

S a a C n 7 nt f w h 7 1 ;° mdy surroundi ^ soon became evi- 
^" ’ n . Wlth faci ' e forgiveness Milly changed the subject 
• d spoke of her best loved books. There was answering 


THE FRIEND OF HER SOUL. 


69 


enthusiasm, with now and then a blank which only served 
to heighten the interest of the points where they met. In 
matters artistic, despite the fortunate selection of her par- 
lor ornaments, Miss Reese was as ignorant as most American 
women at that dark, though recent period. In a matter of 
more importance her deficiency was more remarkable ; her 
curious lack of knowledge of the world would have 
been apparent to one more sophisticated than innocent 
Milly. 

The afternoon passed away like a dream. After many 
abortive attempts to break the chain of pleasure that bound 
her, Milly rose to go. Miss Reese drew her within her 
arms and pressed on the girlish lips a warm caress. 

“ Do not call me Miss Reese, Milly,” she said, “ call me 
Eleanor. We are not strangers. We have long been friends — 
sisters. We have just discovered the relationship, but it has 
long existed.” 

“ Oh, I couldn’t ! ” cried Milly, weighed down by this 
unexpected honor. “ I shouldn’t dare. You are so lovely, 
and so much older than I and all — ” 

“ Nearly twice your age,” said Miss Reese, with her 
serene smile. “ But years are accidents, my child. They 
have no effect upon essentials.” 

Milly walked home in a tumult of bliss. The friend of 
her soul was found at last. Perfect comprehension awaited 
her in the future. Here was one with whom the dearest 
treasures of her imagination would find a ready home. 
Here was one who fully realized the ideal of perfect woman- 
hood, which for herself she had despaired of attaining. Life 
would always be interesting now. 

As she entered the house, her mother’s voice, reprimand- 
ing the “ up-stairs girl ” for her culpable negligence in the 
matter of window screens, jarred upon her ecstatic mood, 
and her father’s weary complaint at the unrelenting order- 


70 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


liness which relegated his shaving materials to unfamiliar 
corners fell for once on deaf ears. 

“ I suppose you found Miss Reese at home," said Mrs. 
Barron, as they awaited the peal of the dinner bell. She 
had not intended to question Milly, whose unwonted silence 
on the subject had rather offended her, but curiosity got the 
better of dignity, a familiar trick of the trait to which our 
common humanity is liable. 

“ Oh, yes’m ! ” said Milly, waking from her dream. 

“ Well, was she as lovely as ever ? ” 

“ Lovelier ! She’s an angel ! " 

“ Don’t gush so, Milly ! ” exclaimed Mr. Barron, with the 
impatience which has been known to overtake the best of 
men just before dinner. 

“ What did she have on ? ” hastily inquired Mrs. Barron, 
deeply interested in this important matter, and equally anx- 
ious to check the rising tears which a harsh word from papa 
would always bring to Milly’s eyes. 

“ Oh, a black dress with a good deal of jet on it. I didn’t 
notice much about it. But she has the most beautiful home, 
mamma ! ’’ 

“ Is she the one Lucy was talking about the other day ? ” 
asked Mr. Barron. 

“ Yes.’’ 

“Well, if she’s one of your strong-minded, short-haired 
women, I don’t want you to be running there, Milly,’’ said 
her father, decidedly. 

“ Oh, papa ! Short-haired ? Her hair is lovely, and a 
great deal longer than mine, I’m sure, from the way it was 
arranged. I’m certain she isn’t strong-minded, and if you 
forbid me to go there it will break my heart." 

“ There’s the bell," cried Mrs. Barron, thankful for any 
interruption at this unseemly hour for discussion, and the 
matter was not taken up again. 


THE FRIEND OF HER SOUL. 


7i 


But Milly pondered much on the subject as she lay wide 
awake in her little white bed that night. She was quite 
acute enough to understand the temper of Goverick in 
general, and the Harrises in particular, and to be aware that 
the evidences of plenty in Miss Reese’s house would have 
secured for her a sure passport to the hearts and homes of 
her neighbors had she not been suspected of mysteriously 
detrimental theories. 

“ I wonder if she really is strong-minded ? And if that 
is such a dreadful thing, after all ? ” were her last waking 
thoughts. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


MELPOMENE HALL. 

“ TT THERE are you going, Milly ?” 

VV “ To Eleanor’s.” 

“ I don’t know about your going there so often.” 

“ Oh, yes you do ! I always tell you.” 

“ You need not be so critical, child. I meant — and you 
know I meant — that I did not altogether approve of the 
intimacy.” 

“ Oh, mamma ! It’s too much honor to me that she 
condescends to notice me, even,” said Milly, vehemently. 

“Your Aunt Lucy doesn’t like her.” 

“ Aunt Lucy doesn’t like any one unless they wear last 
year’s bonnets and go to Wentworth Street Church.” 

“ How can you speak so of your aunt, Milly? And I’m 
sure Miss Reese’s bonnets are nothing very stylish. As for 
Wentworth Street, I’m sure it would be better for her if she 
went to some decent church, instead of taking up with that 
wild affair at Melpomene Hall ? ” 

“ How can^w speak of that noble endeavor in such a 
way, mamma ? And of Eleanor Reese, too ! She is simply 
perfect. Her ideas are so far beyond those of every one 
around her that people who do not understand her are 
forced to take refuge in condemnation.” 

“ It would be better if she took more care of that poor 
old father of hers ; people might understand her better 
then.” 

“ She does take good care of him. She can’t be eternally 


MELPOMENE HALL. 


73 


playing backgammon with him. He’s a dreadfully unin- 
teresting old man, and they have nothing in common. I 
can’t believe it possible that Eleanor is his own 
daughter.” 

“ How long has her mother been dead ? ” 

“ Oh, ever since Eleanor was fifteen. She was a lovely 
woman, Eleanor says, with rare psychical possibilities.” 

“ What V' 

“ Oh, well ! If she had had more congenial surroundings, 
and all that, she would have developed into a marvelous 
woman, but she had not the strength of mind that Eleanor 
has, and she adapted herself to her environment only too 
fatally well.” 

Mrs. Barron glanced up with maternal pride at the tall 
girl who, at seventeen, could give expression to ideas 
unusual in Goverick, and remarkable if shocking. 

“ Miliy,” she said, after a pause in which she had time to 
lift her sewing from her lap, bite off the thread with a 
capable snap, and thread a fresh needle. “ You know Miss 
Reese is not very well liked in Goverick. I’m not referring 
to your aunts alone.” 

“ As I said before, it is because people don’t understand 
her. Her great soul wings its way far above their 
heads.” 

“ They say she is strong-minded and an infidel besides.” 

“ You wouldn’t have her weak-minded, would you ? How 
people misuse that phrase ! An infidel ! One so deeply 
religious as she ! Why, mamma, there is more religion in 
that little handful of earnest seekers at Melpomene Hall 
than in all the churches in Goverick ! ” 

“ Well, it makes me wretched to see you so led away by 
her wild ideas. I only hope it won’t go any further.” 

“ I wish I had any prospect of ever being like her in any 
thing. But I don’t mean to make you wretched, sweet 


74 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


little mamma,” said Milly, with a loving inflection and an 
atoning caress. 

Mrs. Barron was not insensible to the argument of a 
fresh young cheek against her own, and soft lips seeking 
hers, but maternal solicitude made her press her inquiries 
still. 

“ Isn’t she a spiritualist, MiUy ? ” 

“ She believes that the beloved dead are always near us, 
and that there are forms of sentient life which control us 
for good or ill. I don’t think that’s out of harmony with 
the Bible, mamma.” Milly’s voice took on the pleading 
tones of earlier days. 

“ That is all well enough. I’m sure I believe that of our 
dead too. It’s a great comfort to me, sometimes. But table 
tipping and those things, Milly ! ” 

“ I never heard her say much about that sort of thing. 
I’m sure she wouldn’t- have any thing to do with those 
vulgar seances we read about. But if she did I should 
believe in them, because she has so much more light than 
any one else.” 

“ I wish you were not given to these infatuations, 
Milly.” 

“ Oh mamma, please don’t class my friendship with Eleanor 
Reese with those silly, school-girl raptures over unworthy 
objects ! You do not seem to realize that I am a woman 
now.” 

“ No, I can’t realize that you are any thing but my little 
girl, and I wish you ever cared for children of your own age 
and were not always intimate with some one of twice your 
years.” 

Milly was not pleased, but in a later time she came to 
count among her sweetest joys the certainty that as the years 
rolled over her, leaving whitened hairs and withered hopes 
in their track, the motherly eyes would still see in the flat- 


MELPOMENE HALL. 


75 


tened hues and worn lines of the fading face only the 
smooth contours and fresh tints of mamma’s little girl. 

“ I’m going to stay at Eleanor’s to tea, mamma, and we are 
going to meeting at the hall this evening.” 

“ On Sunday, Milly ! ” 

“ Can’t you understand that it is a religious service, 
mamma ? ” 

“ No, I can’t see where the religion comes in. And you 
know your father doesn’t like it.” 

“ Oh ! he doesn’t mind, except when Aunt Lucy has been 
hereto prejudice him against one who is so vastly her 
superior that she can’t endure her. Papa said last night that 
he considered Eleanor a very charming woman. Good-by, 
dear old small mother.” 

The situation of Melpomene Hall was not attractive. It 
had been built, in the days when Goverick looked askance 
at its one theater, by some worthy gentlemen who wished 
the youth of their city to have some legitimate place of 
amusement that might counterbalance the dangerous 
attractions of the solitary play-house — not a difficult matter 
of attainment, the non-prejudiced observer might have 
thought. The name of the hall had been selected on 
euphonic grounds, it having strayed in some mysterious 
manner into the memory of the old gentleman who was 
mainly instrumental in causing the house to be built, and 
who represented the largest amount of stock, though possi- 
bly not the largest amount of culture, in the undertaking. 
“ Melpomene ” was a fine word to say ; it had an imposingly 
classic sound, and was probably architectural in significance, 
was the thought in Mr. Warren’s mind, so “ Melpomene ” 
was carved over the door of the forlorn edifice, where possibly 
a sufficient number of simple tragedies in real life came to 
be enacted to justify the name. 

The kind old founder of the institution bestowed more 


76 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


solid marks of favor upon it than this token of his eccentric 
taste in nomenclature, and now slept his last sleep, and if 
the peculiarities of American civilization debarred him from 
the privilege of sleeping with his fathers, his slumbers were 
none the less profound. But he and his co-workers had not 
been endowed with prophetic vision, for the fashionable 
residents of Goverick never built in the vicinity of Mel- 
pomene Hall the princely dwellings which the eye of faith 
had foreseen. They chose for their dwelling places less 
apparently eligible portions of the big, straggling city, 
and Melpomene Hall was left stranded on the rocks of 
vacant lots, subsequently giving place to mean streets filled 
with small shops, where the unhappy conductors of a pitiful 
commerce exchanged their small wares for smaller coin, and 
died respectably of slow starvation with the quiet independ- 
ence of true Americans. 

A checkered career had been the fate of Melpomene Hall. 
The gilded youth of Goverick, with traditional perversity, 
had shown but a languishing disposition to avail themselves 
of the means for innocent recreation placed at their disposal 
by mistaken benevolence, and had flocked with unimpaired 
alacrity to the histrionic temple known as “ Benderby’s ” 
until the gentleman who officiated as high priest of dramatic 
art in Goverick deemed it advisable to consult the taste of 
the rising and ignore the scruples of the risen generation by 
building a new theater. Melpomene Hall, a burden on the 
hands and consciences of the remaining stockholders, was 
devoted to a variety of purposes. It once served as a 
concert room where the Sons of Orpheus, a musical society 
where the promise greatly exceeded the performance, held 
their fortnightly re-unions. Then the Young Men’s 
Christian Association had utilized it for a lecture room, but 
becoming disconcerted by the theatrically semi-circular 
arrangement of the seats, had fled to a building where the 


MELPOMENE HALL. 


77 


architecture was in conformity with the principles of the 
society. 

The Rev. Mr. Hanson, who had had a difficulty with his 
bishop, used it as a fold for his wandering flock for some 
time, and greatly enjoyed the desperate liberty which per- 
mitted him to indulge unrestrained in dark hints as to the 
probable limit of future punishment, and the elastic possibili- 
ties of the Mosaic six days of creation. Poor man ! The 
certain limit of his income, which was unfortunately destitute 
of elastic possibilities, unless sudden shrinkage with no power 
of rebound can be denoted as elasticity, soon brought him 
back to the original fold, a sad and sorry sheep, for he felt 
that had not Mrs. Hanson and her four babies required 
something more immediately nourishing than the pure milk 
of the word, he might have made something of that little 
independent church. Well, Hanson is a bishop himself, 
now, but in listening to his short sermons, one who knows 
the foolish little story of his early aberrations may catch now 
and then a stray sentence, which, in its kindly, tolerant 
bitterness, tells the humble tale of a disappointed man, 
charitable, because conscious of failure in himself, having 
sold his birthright that the helpless creatures dependent 
upon him may fatten and flourish on the savory mess of pot- 
tage. 

After the dispersion of the members of the “ Church of 
Divine Liberty ” Melpomene Hall became secular again, 
and in turn a meeting-ground for various secret societies 
and temperance clubs, a theater for the fortunately 
restricted display of amateur dramatic talent, and a haven for 
the various spiritualistic bodies which grew and flourished 
sporadically in Goverick. 

Lately it had become the home of a society of which 
Miss Reese was a distinguished member. In part this 
society was composed of the more radical members of a 


78 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


Unitarian Church, which was rapidly acquiring in Goverick 
a prominence deplorable from the Harris point of view, and 
for the rest of restless spirits, reveling in every sort of 
“ ism ", some sincere and simple as children, others carry- 
ing into the world of thought and aspiration that principle 
of adventure which characterized their dealings with men. 

To the starved soul of Milly Barron this little coterie was 
a very storehouse of riches, and she flung herself into the 
active mental life with her accustomed impetuosity. Her 
precocious youth quickly made her an object of interest 
among these people, all intelligent, and for the most part 
kindly of nature, and she received a meed of affectionate 
adulation which made her blossom like the rose. 

The beliefs of this society were certainly not formulated 
into any creed. They scorned the term “ agnostic ”, and 
their theories were an odd compound of Spencerian philos- 
ophy and esoteric Buddhism ; a union which, like other ill 
assorted marriages, was fruitful in endless discussion. 
They were addressed from Sunday to Sunday by one 
selected from their membership, or by some wandering star 
whom they had the happiness to secure for a temporary 
scintillation. Once it was Luke Power, the English dog- 
matist in matters of culture, who had not then quite 
reached his present meridian of fame. Again it was Mrs. 
Harrison, the inspirational speaker who was understood to 
have renounced a high social position in a locality vaguely 
described as “ the West ”, together with the society of 
husband and children, that she might more fully enjoy that of 
disembodied intimates. Again, it was a mild young radical 
in search of a “ liberal ” pulpit, with salary to correspond, 
and not infrequently an emancipated clergyman, whose 
broad views had been less in demand than his resignation, 
would favor them with a desperate attempt to put new wine 
into old bottles, with the natural result of this experiment, 


MELPOMENE HALE . 


79 


which is nevertheless repeated every day and on every pos- 
sible occasion. 

Milly had not been altogether mistaken in her eulogy of 
the genuine religious feeling rife in this “ handful of earn- 
est seekers ”. There were gray-haired men and women 
whose simplicity of heart and purpose would have shamed 
into respectful silence the veriest scoffer, and there were 
younger workers, full of the pure fire of that zeal which 
feels the capacity to reform the world and read the universe. 
It was all rather absurd, perhaps, and certainly all was not 
gold that glittered there, but there were those who began 
life not ignobly in that little band, scattered now beyond 
recall. The hands that reverently then reared an altar to 
the Unknown God, are busy building Mammon’s temple 
now ; the best and brightest have turned aside to yet lower 
paths, and their banners trail dishonored in the dust. 
Others, less strong and less weak, have turned their eyes 
from the vision of the Promised Land to the beaten track 
of this vexed world, to find perhaps, a little love and a little 
bread. 

Well, these are good things, but where are the blossoms 
of Spring ? 

“ I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs.” 

Others will dream and wake and work, but these no 


more. 


CHAPTER IX. 


HASLETT AND FERRARD. 

I T was nearly a year since Milly had been introduced by 
Eleanor Reese to the society which brought a new ele- 
ment within the much enduring walls of Melpomene Hall, 
and that one year, at her impressionable age and with her 
extraordinary susceptibility of nature, had been sufficient to 
revolutionize the ideas and opinions of her short lifetime. 

Her enthusiastic admiration for Miss Reese grew apace, 
as she perceived the single hearted devotion of her 
friend to the cause of human progress, and she had as yet 
neither the enlightenment nor the audacity to criticise her 
methods. 

As they entered the dreary hall with its insufficient light 
on that Sunday evening, it struck Milly as a piece of posi- 
tive heroism that these people of undoubted culture and 
refinement should be willing to spend so much of their 
really valuable time in this unlovely place. The horseshoe 
of seats promised little in the way of comfort — and kept its 
promise. Emaciated strips of matting covered the floor 
of the narrow aisles. The decorations were examples of 
garish dilapidation. On either side of the platform, a 
nondescript affair not unlike a cross between a stage and 
an old fashioned box shower bath, were painted on the walls 
female figures of heroic size. One represented Plenty, as a 
woman of abnormal development and a really Simian 
length of arm, showering ribstone pippins from a triangular 
funnel in which the eye of genius alone could discern a 


HAS LETT AND FERRARD. 


8x 

cornucopia. The other a vague impulse of patriotism had 
induced the gifted but unknown artist to designate as 
America. 

This colossal person was attired neatly in the 
national flag. She held a model of the capitol at Washing- 
ton in a hand which the author of her being had composed 
on principles at present unfamiliar to anatomists, and a 
bird happily calculated to serve as either owl or eagle 
shadowed her expansive brow, rendering the fate of nations 
a matter of comparative indifference to the beholder, since 
in case of the overthrow of our present government and 
the substitution of a limited monarchy likely to promote 
the cause of classical education, America could with little 
alteration be made to serve as Minerva. Art and com- 
merce were represented in the trimming of America's gown 
by an arrangement in loose coins and palettes, while the 
army and navy of our country were suggested by a very 
improbable piece of ordnance and a man-of-war calculated 
to reconcile the most captious reformer to the present con- 
dition of our navy. 

The shabby tawdriness of this background set out in 
strong contrast the pale, refined features of a young radical 
theologue, whose monotonous voice read out as Eleanor 
and Milly took their seats. 

Out from the heart of Nature rolled 
The burden of the Bible old.” 

He was followed by a very remarkable person of myster- 
ious nationality, who endeavored to explain the present 
moral condition of our planet by the means of various 
colored charts which were entertaining but not conclusive. 

When the somewhat prolonged exhibition of these 
spiritual maps was at an end, a round little man with an 
expression of great sweetness and openness stepped to the 
front. 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


82 


“ I don’t want to detain you but a moment,” said he, in 
a tone that would warrant the most flagrantly hypocritical 
beggar in asking him for a quarter, “ but I must ask all of 
you who can possibly make it agree with your other engage- 
ments, to come to this hall on Thursday night of this week, 
when Mrs. Elsie Radner Hyland, a professor of psychom- 
ancy from Boston, will address all those who are anxious to 
inform themselves on questions of vital importance to the 
cause of humanity. I have heard her speak in the parlors 
of a friend, and I do assure you, my dear friends, that her 
oration surpassed any thing I have ever heard. 

“ You must not allow yourself to be deprived of such a 
great pleasure, and, I may add, such assistance in matters 
pertaining to the moral development of human nature. I 
should feel myself criminal, absolutely criminal ” — and the 
old gentlemen looked with an awed earnestness around the 
room — “ if I did not put you in the way of embracing this 
rare opportunity.” 

“ Shall we come on Thursday, Eleanor ? ” whispered 
Milly. 

A decided nod and an emphatic pressure of the hand 
assured her of Eleanor’s desire to avail herself of the offered 
privilege, and Milly composed herself into reverent atten- 
tion as the benedictory poem was read. 

Directly across the aisle sat two men who would have 
been conspicuous in any assemblage, and who presented an 
aspect of almost startling incongruity among the mild and 
spectacled men, the unfashionable matrons and spinsters, 
and the few strong browed, seedy coated young fellows 
who composed the audience. They were notably hand- 
some men. The smaller, slighter, less forcible man in 
appearance possessed a face to which the refinement of 
feature and richness of color gave the semblance of one of 
those wonderful old portraits, which fascinate by depth of 


HASLETT AND FERRARD. 


83 


tint and delicacy of contour, until the subtlety of expres- 
sion disturbs the thoughtful beholder by the suggestion of 
forces only half revealed by that fine, hard beauty. All 
was clear-cut, vivid, distinct. The square forehead was 
crowned by crisp hair, where the amber brown of the 
forked beard and parted mustache was repeated in fainter 
hues. The eyes were of that intense blue which we meet 
now and then in the open gaze of a baby, not gray, or 
violet, or green, but pure sky blue, the sunny azure accen- 
tuated by the blackest of brows and lashes. The rich rose 
hue of the cheeks, the coral red of the lips, the dazzling 
white of the teeth combined with the singular perfection of 
feature to render attractive a face for which the gentle, 
sarcastic "'indulgence of glance would alone have won 
interest certainly, liking probably. His slender, elegant 
figure was attired with the fastidious nicety of a man to 
whom the impression created by his outward seeming is of 
importance. 

His companion was run in a different mold. He was 
evidently of the opinion that he could compel attention, not 
to say homage, without the factitious aids of the toilet ; less 
regular of feature and vivid of complexion than the other, 
he was yet more strikingly handsome. The erect, careful 
carriage of the other was wanting, but there was something 
dauntless in the pose of the powerful head, something 
rugged in the slouchy dignity of the massive figure which 
engendered a disposition to conciliate in the timid beholder. 
The pale, incisive face, which seemed to cut a path before 
him through the ranks of men by its intense expression of 
determined life, was lighted by a pair of eyes, deep, flashing, 
black as night, in curious contrast with the masses of pale, 
fair hair, tossed back from the serene brow. 

The face of the one expressed an indolent, gentle interest, 
the other a hearty intolerance, as the services proceeded to 


84 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


their poetic close and the small congregation was dispersed. 
Miss Reese bowed with her usual fervent cordiality as they 
passed where she and the faithful Milly stood, eagerly 
engaged in conversation with the enthusiastic Mr. Archer* 
who retailed anew to a group of alert listeners his praises 
of Mrs. Elsie Radner Hyland, the professor of psychomancy 
from Boston. 

“ What a handsome woman Eleanor Reese is ! ” said the 
blue-eyed man, as he and his friend emerged into the dingy 
street. 

“ Handsome enough." 

“ Who is that child who is so constantly with her of late ? " 

“ I do not know.” 

“An interesting face." 

“ Too heavy." 

“ Excessively sensitive, in spite of that. Undoubtedly 
one of Eleanor’s latest crazes." 

“ An apparently harmless one this time." 

“ What did you think of the services to-night ? " 

“ All damned nonsense." 

“ Strong ! " 

“ Inaccurate, then ; the mild mental gymnastics we have 
witnessed to-night are unworthy of the descriptive strength 
of a good, round adjective." 

“ Oh, I don’t know ! There is a good deal of right 
feeling and earnestness in that little society." 

“ You are a tolerant rascal, Rod. At times I suspect you 
of a sneaking altruism. By the way, were you not a burning 
and shining light of that or a similar society in your callow 
days ? " 

“ Not of that one," answered Rodney Haslett, with his 
pleasant, nervous laugh, “ one more ambitious intellectually 
though more limited in scope. We did not attempt to sail 
through the final flame of the vast empyrean. We restricted 


HASLETT AND FERRARD. 


85 


ourselves to groveling facts as formulated by the English 
positivists. It was good practice. We acquired a habit of 
ready discussion in that club. I qualified myself for a 
Special pleader there.” 

“ Was that where you met Miss Reese ? ” 

“ Oh, no ! Our families have been rather intimate — 
neighbors, in fact, for years. Her mother was a sweet 
woman, just a little accountable for the peculiarities of her 
charming daughter. I wonder why Eleanor has never 
married ? ” 

‘‘Wedded to humanity, I suppose.” 

“ I think the innocent bigamy of taking a concrete spouse 
also is not impossible in her case. Yet her capability in 
that direction is still unproven, and she is nearly thirty-five. 
However, I believe there was a cousin to whom she was 
betrothed in remote antiquity, and whose early death seemed 
to cast on her only the lightest of passing shadows. I 
remember seeing him, a pale, nice-looking fellow, when I 
was a little shaver, and wondering if he ever brought her 
bon-bons or took her to drive on Saturday afternoons. I 
had a big sister — about Eleanor’s age, by the way — who 
had set up a lover, and at thirteen I was thoroughly con- 
versant with the usages of an orthodox engagement.” 

“ Miss Reese’s singular susceptibility to new theories 
apparently does not extend to the undeniable charms of 
our sex.” 

“ Since when have you discovered the charms of our sex 
to be theoretical rather than practical ? A belief in our 
alleged attractions can hardly be considered as the result 
of recent investigation though ; class it among the old 
fallacies, my dear fellow. As to Eleanor Reese, she has 
not had a chance to realize our hypothetical fascinations. 
They lived in a sort of crustaceous content until Mrs. Reese 
died, and Eleanor began to develop into her present self. 


86 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Her delightful manner is inadequate to disguise her indif- 
ference to ordinary society, which is inevitably reciprocated. 
There was always a vein of oddity in the family that the 
neighbors did not relish. Their sympathetic advances to 
Eleanor after her mother’s death were met with so little 
cordiality that they were not encouraged to repeat them. 
She is thoroughly amiable, but they did not interest her, 
and she had neither the tact nor the disposition to conceal 
that unpleasant fact. My mother is the only one of them 
all who ever became intimate with the family. She was 
very fond of Mrs. Reese. Of fashionable society, even of 
the year-before-last type prevalent in Goverick, she knows 
nothing. She has met few men, and of those few none 
have admired her. To tell the truth, she is not attractive, 
handsome and sweet-tempered as she is. She is utterly des- 
titute of charm for me, though I know her to be better 
endowed in every respect than the majority of women.” 

“ What of the father ? ” 

“ A mild old vulgarian whose interest in life centers in 
his backgammon board. But he has been shrewd enough 
in his time. He will leave Eleanor a very pretty fortune.” 

“ Speaking of vulgarians — was White at that meeting last 
Saturday ? ” 

“ Yes, and mightily important.” 

“ Well, he really is of sufficient importance to warrant 
some of his assumptions. He has had the shrewdness to 
amass a pretty fortune also, and he is a valuable man to us, 
for his popularity in Goverick is just what one would 
expect, knowing the city and the man.” 

“ Now your tolerance comes in, Ferrard. You make a 
friend of that rank Philistine in social as well as polit- 
ical life.” 

“ I have no friend but you, Rod, though I confess my 
admiration for you weakens under the vernal innocence of 


HASLETT AND FERRARD. 


87 

that last remark. Are you not aware that a man of White’s 
type, aggressive, warm-hearted, at once conceited and dis- 
trustful of his position in the eyes of others, must be con- 
ciliated on other than purely business principles. He is a 
long way off from the professional politician who seeks 
recognition in that character only. I can not afford to 
treat him in accordance with my estimate of him. Good 
Lord, man, it is a type too common to be ignored ! What 
has become of your usual acumen ? ” 

“Your esteemed friend did not appear to me worthy of 
its exercise. But I will take him at your valuation and 
treat him as a representative man. But you handle him 
more in my fashion. It is rather a deviation from your 
usual hammer-and-anvil method of working men up to 
white heat in the fire of your own enthusiasm and pound- 
ing them into shapes of utility by sheer strength of will. 
You don’t often condescend to moral suasion or offer the 
cigarette of conciliation to your men.” 

“ I can deviate and persuade and propitiate when I 
choose. It is not my favorite or approved method, but it is 
an easy one in cases like the one under discussion, and an 
economy of labor. Come in, old man. I can’t offer you 
any thing but beer and cigars, but ‘ such as I have give I 
thee’ — personal regard included.” 

Paul Ferrard carried out his principle of general fidelity 
to truth in this concluding sentence of private import as in 
the majority of his public utterances. In his forceful 
nature was stirred a leaven of genuine sweetness, and if he 
gave a thought divorced from selfish ends to any one it 
was to Rodney Haslett, whom he loved because of the points 
of resemblance between them. 

They had been college chums, and their friendship had 
survived those early days, when each chose the other as 
antagonist in debating club and rowing match, and as 


88 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


recipient of the confidences popularly supposed to be the 
monopoly of the softer sex. They had both passed through 
college and graduated with brilliant distinction. Neither 
was wealthy, but Haslett’s bills had been paid by a hard- 
working and indulgent father, while Ferrard had taught 
and fought his way through with a resolution at once 
dogged and dashing, peculiarly his own. In their social 
relations a marked difference existed. Haslett was univer- 
sally popular, though Ferrard was his only intimate. Fer- 
rard was as universally detested, save by a few worshipers 
who maintained that Paul Ferrard would make history. 

As a matter of fact, he found it extremely difficult to 
make a living when he left college, but the same indom- 
itable will which brought the country boy from the stony 
field to be a dreaded leader in the most fastidious college 
in America, soon made that which is often more difficult of 
attainment than fame, mere bread and butter, a matter of 
assurance. He was an able brute, and he rapidly discerned 
that he should not be one of those who win distinction by a 
modest, unslackening approach to fortune. He scorned 
the gradual gains of more self distrustful workers, and by 
brilliant, bold, apparently hazardous, but ably calculated 
measures, he made his way. The word brute is used advis- 
edly, and as a matter of accurate statement. It is a matter 
of scientific determination that the simple, direct, absolutely 
selfish methods by which animal life is carried on result in 
the elimination of the weaker, less developed types and the 
survival of the fittest. By just such methods Ferrard 
carried out his plan of life. The student of human nature 
could perceive in his superb mental endowment the sub- 
limation of the brutal instinct of self preservation. He was 
a man of singular purity and rectitude of character, having 
the astuteness to see that honesty is the best policy, and 
the vigor of purpose to act according to his lights, and 


HASLET?' AND FERRARD. 


89 


being the fortunate possessor of a physique so perfectly 
poised as to be free from the solicitations of small, morbid 
vices, and a temper so self engrossed as to render him 
peculiarly insensible to what is generally supposed to be the 
irresistible form of temptation. He was not without his 
finer impulses, being a healthy human animal of excellent 
moral development, and he honestly intended to lay all the 
weight of his influence in the scale of right. He of course 
acknowledged the success of the individual as the prime 
factor in the success of the human race, and he believed 
himself to be an individual whose coercive power exerted 
upon his contemporaries would shape the future favorably 
for mankind. He was assured of the value of his existence 
to the world at large, and he intended to cherish that 
existence as a matter of public as well as private import- 
ance. 

Rodney Haslett was of a more distinctively human type. 
As sincerely selfish in ultimate action as Paul Ferrard, his 
earlier motives flowed with less directness into the one 
channel. The doubts, vacillations, varying impulses of a 
man governed by the mysterously mixed consciousness of 
one in whom the altruistic tendencies born of the reflective 
faculties war impotently against the egotistic desires bred 
by vivid perceptions, beset him. He discerned and con- 
sidered the claims of others, but always ended by conced- 
ing the superiority of his own. His intelligence, less mas- 
sively intellectual than that of his friend, was keener, sub- 
tler, less immediately effective, but of a finer type. 

He read men well, and by that quick divination of motives 
learned to move them, as he pulled the secret strings of a 
discovered foible, or laid a discerning finger on a hidden 
sore. Ferrard rarely cared to get more than the outline of 
a man whom he intended to use, feeling confident of his 
power to sway those whom he would by the imperious force 


9 o 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


of his will and the exercise of that personal magnetism 
which from its very strength antagonized those whom he 
considered unworthy to elicit its exercise. Haslett studied, 
with the tense patience of a nervous man, his instruments, 
until not a quality of temper was unknown to him. 

He was a man who broke no written or unwritten law, 
now that he could count his thirty years ; his early youth, 
however, had had its moral vicissitudes. He was not a 
man of strong passions, that of ambition alone excepted, 
but his sense of the beautiful was far from defective, and 
his artistic sensibility, rather than his human nature, had 
lain at, the root of the soon weeded-out tropic growths of 
young manhood. 

No one could have been indifferent to these men, watch- 
ing them that night as they sat before the fire in Ferrard’s 
dreary room, their beautiful faces beaming kindly on each 
other in the light flung from the flaring gas jet. 

“ I know who that girl is ! ” said Haslett suddenly. 

“ What girl ? ” 

“ Eleanor Reese’s friend. Her name is Barron. You 
know her father I think ; a patent lawyer ; rather an able 
fellow, but given to unfortunate speculations. He makes a 
very fair income, but loses three-quarters of it in wild-cat 
stocks and bubble roads. He and White married sisters. I 
saw this girl once at White’s house, when I called about 
that business of yours. It is rather odd to find a niece of 
old White one of the Inner Cult.” 

“ The girl looks like a lady.” 

“ Oh, her father is a gentleman ; a decided improvement 
on his worthy brother-in-law in externals, but he won’t have 
as good a time of it in this world. I suspect him of an 
undeveloped intelligence, which will seriously interfere with 
success in life on his present basis. Are they Ward’s peo- 
ple, I wonder ? ” 


HASLETT AND FERRARD. 


91 


" No, why ? ” 

“ I saw Ward shaking hands with White at the meeting 
the other night.” 

“ Oh, he knows him politically. The Whites and their 
kin are people to whom Ward is little better than the man 
whom I heard one Elkins — another brother-in-law of White 
— describe as the great soul-killer from the boundless prairie. 
White is trustee, deacon, Sunday-school superintendent, 
and heaven knows what else in old Lowler’s church. But 
he is too shrewd not to recognize Ward as a political 
power. By the way, is not that very remarkable society, to 
which you introduced me to-night, occasionally fed from 
Ward’s flock ? ” 

“ Yes ; he adds a touch of mysticism to his teachings 
which is rather more likely to commend itself to those 
amiable gropers than the rational morality to which many 
of them subscribed as they listened to Hadfield’s dis- 
courses.” 

“ Teachings ! Ward is no teacher.” 

“ He is a great orator.” 

“ A different proposition.” 

“ He might have been a teacher if it had not been for 
those Connecticut apple blossoms.” 

“ Explain yourself.” 

“ Ah,” said Haslett, blowing delicate circles of smoke 
into the air and watching them out of sight. “ Ward is a 
very affectionate fellow. He sets himself to work some 
days, when he has been doing some hard reading, and he 
writes a great sermon. The iconoclast gets the better of 
the poet, and he smashes a row of little gods, and slashes 
valiantly through a thicket of superstition until a stray 
flower, grown in that favorable shade, meets his eyes. He 
stops short. He drops his ax. He picks up the broken 
pieces of miscellaneous deity with remorseful fingers. He 


9 2 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


thinks of the days when his portly figure was that of a tiny 
child who toddled to the house of God holding a fatherly 
hand. He hears the birds once more ; he inhales the 
fragrant breath of opening buds ; he sees the trees in the 
old orchard bowing beneath a weight of rosy snow. It all 
comes back to him, and he breathes the air of other days 
again. He hears his father’s voice in prayer ; he longs, 
great child that he is, to feel the hand, dust so long ago, on 
his gray head. He would like to kneel again before God’s 
first altar step, the mother’s knee. The dusty weight of 
years has never been heavy enough to still the vibration of 
chords now resounding anew in his soul. He feels all the 
pangs of an unpracticed traitor. He shuts his notes up in 
the Bible with a slam, and he finishes the sermon with a good, 
rousing Gospel flourish. 

“ I know him ! As the expositor of an intense humanity 
he is unrivaled ; as a man, a specimen of the human race, 
he is a magnificent success. But, I grant you, as a teacher, 
a thinker of even the second or third order, he is a dead 
failure. And he knows it, when his seasons of spiritual 
intoxication pass off and leave him with a mental headache 
after his little mystical spree.” 

“ Not bad, Rodney. What do you think of Hadfield ?” 

“ I admire him. He is the best balanced man of my 
acquaintance, a moral teacher of the first order. Give 
him Ward’s magnetism ” 

“ And he would not be Hadfield ! Beer?” 

“ I thought the limit of your endurance had been reached.” 

“ I like to hear you prattle, Rod, but these things have 
only a passing interest for me. They are not to be settled, 
and I have no time for fruitless speculation. Oh, I know ! 
You were only giving me a charming analysis of Ward and 
Hadfield, but from the nature of the men I divine the 
nature of the impending discussion. Tell me about Hern- 
don’s attitude with regard to that bill.” 


CHAPTER X. 


A PROPHETESS. 

I T promised to be a wild March night on that Thursday- 
evening when Mrs. Elsie Radner Hyland, the profes- 
sor of psychomancy from Boston, was to address all those 
who were anxious to inform themselves on questions of 
vital importance to the cause of humanity. Eleanor and 
Milly were met, as they turned the corner of the shelterless 
street where stood Melpomene Hall, by a gust of wind which 
sent their breath through their lips in quick gasps. 

“ What a night ! ” exclaimed Milly, as they buffeted 
their way to the entrance, where a crazy swinging lamp 
flared and rattled in the blast. 

“ I like it ! ” said Eleanor, breathless but enthusiastic. 
“ It is a strong night. A night of portent. How the souls 
abroad on their mysterious missions must be borne along on 
the mighty wings of the tempest ! ” 

Milly looked at her friend with loving admiration as they 
paused within the grateful shelter of the inner door. A 
critical anatysis of the remarkable speech quoted above 
would have been impossible to her. Who had such thoughts 
as beautiful Eleanor ? 

These thoughts were certainly comprehensive. During 
the nine months of Milly’s intimacy with Miss Reese she 
had certainly never detected in her a want of receptivity. 
She had become accustomed to the presence in her friend’s 
parlors of inscrutable reformers, whose views and incomes 
were alike indefinite. In one or two instances Eleanor had 


94 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


given shape and substance to both. Miss Reese welcomed 
with credulous generosity these unordained missionaries to 
a society groveling in the mire of modest comfort. Her 
faith in these apostles of humanity was not shaken when 
one of them, who declared himself to be a Polish patriot, 
proved himself to belong to that class of alleged patriots, 
who, holding communistic ideas on the subject of portable 
property, endeavor by theory and practice to lessen the sin 
of private ownership among their acquaintance. He dis- 
appeared suddenly one day, and owing to a pardonable 
confusion of ideas, some rather valuable prints belonging to 
Miss Reese disappeared with him. Another — a lady this 
time — had been filled with admiration for Eleanor’s bonnets, 
which we know did not come up to the Goverick standard. 
She told Eleanor that she really must try her milliner. 
Eleanor was flattered, being a thorough woman, and gave 
Miss Strade the milliner’s address. That lady did try the 
milliner, and also Eleanor’s patience, rather severely, when 
Miss Strade returned to Topeka, leaving to Eleanor, as a 
token of confiding regard, a milliner’s bill of proportions 
which gave ample testimony of her appreciation of the mil- 
liner’s style. Miss Reese atoned for her mistaken confi- 
dence in these worthies by occasionally becoming subject 
to attacks of fierce suspicion directed at perfectly harm- 
less people, but the mass of her faith was entirely unaf- 
fected. 

She occasionally went off on a little mission of her own. 
She spent a week in New York attending the convention of 
a certain minor Woman’s Suffrage Association, and would 
have been of real service in a matter of vital importance, 
had she not endeavored to impress on the minds of these 
practical, hard-working women — some of them snatching a 
week’s vacation, and sacrificing a hardly-spared portion of 
their inadequate wages, in order to further a cause in which 


A PROPHETESS. 


95 


bitter experience had taught them to see their only hope — 
the idea that womanhood, a vaguely endowed ideal of 
impossible perfection, was to be the end which they should 
struggle to attain. The securing of the rights which should 
give to woman the status of a person , and make it possible 
for the fatherless daughter and sister to be the bread-win- 
ner, conscious of power to fill the hungry mouths at home, 
she apparently regarded as a secondary consideration. 
She addressed the association in beautiful language, but 
she was incapable of formulating her ideas, having a mind 
utterly untrained, and decidedly rather wide in scope than 
deep. The suffrage society was not one of those composed 
of ladies of elegant leisure, whom the drawing of domestic 
and social blanks has sent into the field, but a band of hard- 
working, ill-paid female clerks, teachers, book-keepers and 
business women, bitterly conscious of doing men’s work for 
women’s wages. They admired Miss Reese ; listened 
eagerly at first to the graceful delivery of her graceful 
speeches, and looked with pleasure at her vigorous yet deli- 
cate beauty. But these workers, sharpened by contact with 
the world, soon found that the new delegate had little to 
tell them that was of any importance. They did not care 
to hear about Truth, and Beauty, and Mind Essence. 
They did not want old platitudes clad in new poetry, they 
wanted the franchise. They soon discovered that Miss 
Reese’s real capability for hard work was coupled with a 
singular lack of practical efficiency, and they ceased to make 
a lion of her. As a natural consequence, Miss Reese felt 
their apprehension of the great question of Woman’s Mis- 
sion to be very imperfect, and her enthusiasm and attendance 
slackened. 

One day Milly had visited her and had been struck by a 
sudden gloom as she entered the usually sunny library. 
Books, pictures, furniture, all looked ghastly in a dreary 


9 6 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


light. The wide windows, through which the afternoon sun 
had been wont to pour a flood of golden light, were filled in 
with blue glass. 

“ Oh, Eleanor ! ” cried Milly, in dismay. “ Why have you 
spoiled your pretty room?” 

“ You are surely aware of the great sanative powers of 
blue glass, Milly ! ” 

“ Why, I know there has been a great deal of talk about 
it in the newspapers. But why not have it in one of the 
upper rooms ? ” 

“ I have it in three of the upper rooms, but this is the 
room where my mental life is largely carried on. I need 
the influence here more particularly. All my work is done 
here.” 

“ Oh, it’s all right if you say so. But it seems a pity; this 
room was so pleasant,” said Milly regretfully. 

“ Think of the meaning of. blue, Milly! Blue is the em- 
blematic color of truth, the color of the heavens. Is there 
not a dim reaching out toward the eternal verities in this 
discovery that blue light is of benefit to our physical 
frames ? ” 

Milly thought this a fine conception, and bore the horrible 
light, which was a positive affliction to her sensitive, artistic 
eye, with equanimity, until Miss Reese’s faith in the moral 
qualities of blue glass became faint through over-exertion, 
and she discovered that massage rubbing was the needed 
supplement to her physical forces. 

Milly, accustomed to the narrow rigidity of the Harris 
mental mold, found in Eleanor Reese a lovely nature, 
‘‘Fluid to the truth,” she said' to herself. That Eleanor 
had left the Dutch Reformed Church in which she was 
born, to unite herself with the body of mystic believers, 
known as Swedenborgians, and that she had in turn aban- 
doned that in order to devote herself more entirely to the 


A PPOPttETESS. 


97 


namelesscongregationmeelmgin Melpomene Hall, seemed to 
Milly the evidences of a nature which would never be satisfied 
with partial truth. The word “ flighty," applied by the 
plain people of Goverick to Miss Reese as a characteriza- 
tion of this religious wandering, seemed to her a shameful 
travesty on the noble restlessness which impelled to con- 
stant search, extracting the good from each encountered 
system, but remaining content in none. 

There was a large representation from the Sunday’s congre- 
gation in Melpomene Hall that Thursday evening, and the 
house was nearly full. It was a motley audience. The 
faces familiar to Milly and Eleanor were sprinkled in among 
others, of which some were new in type as well as individu- 
ality. There were eager faces, with something of the vulture 
in their hard curves ; heavy faces, where the human dough 
seemed to have risen in puffy inequality due to the defective 
nature of the mental yeast employed. There were sensi- 
tive, anxious faces, too, these oftenest shadowed by the 
veil of crape with its sad tale of recent bereavement. Nor 
were the common, unstoried faces, abundant in every au- 
dience, gentle and simple, from hillside church to metro- 
politan theater, absent here. In nearly all, except these 
last, there was a peculiar look of confused earnestness. 

There is an affection of the eyes, the result of over-use 
and delicacy of the constitution, which produces a relaxa- 
tion of the muscles. The eyes are not held steadily in 
place ; the focal power is gone. In the faces of those thus 
afflicted is often a curious, troubled expression, a bewildered, 
strained effort to bring the visible world back into focus 
again; to see things as they are, not in this dim, disjointed 
fashion in which they appear. 

Something akin to this expression was on the faces of 
many among the audience to-night, though no undue pre- 
ponderance of spectacles, plain and smoked, denoted the 


98 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


presence of a general ophthalmic disorder. A look as if the 
mind’s eye had been overworked and impaired by constant 
use in a poor light, and the actual relations of things 
had become confused and disarranged to the mental 
vision. 

There were those of a coarser type present, whose men- 
tal focus was right enough undoubtedly, so far as the per- 
ception of outward absurdities is concerned, and who had 
been lured hither by the desire to feed a curiosity which 
would find an added pleasure in satisfaction from the 
thought of the sarcastic description of the proceedings to be 
given later to a circle of admiring friends. 

Milly and Miss Reese slipped into a couple of seats at 
the end of a row occupied chiefly by women, wearing for 
the most part, outer garments in the shape of black cloth 
sacques, of a construction now happily obsolete. These 
hung loose alike in back and front, were cut with constrict- 
ing lowness on the shoulders, and were ornamented with a 
mysterious passementerie which had invariably shed its 
beads and displayed innumerable festoons of unoccupied 
string. An occasional shawl, which item of comfort in 
other material than camel’s hair, fashion has apparently 
relegated to the summer hotel piazza, broke the monotony 
of the sacques, and relieved the dingy darkness of the row 
of female seekers, ail seeming by some unknown law of 
selection, to be crowned by bonnets composed of a now 
extinct variety of coarse black lace. 

A chair, a table, and the unfailing glass of water coldly 
furnished forth the platform. As Eleanor and Milly took 
their places, a man stepped out from a side door and seated 
himself in the chair. He was tall and broad, heavily and 
rather clumsily built. His hair, goatee and mustache were of 
a dead flaxen hue ; his eyes were pale and narrow ; his 
complexion an opaque white, the only touch of color 


A PROPHETESS. 99 

in the wide face being supplied by a full crimson 
mouth. 

He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit of cheap broadcloth. 
The frock coat lay in heavily creased wrinkles on his broad 
shoulders. Its gaping collar displayed a triangle of shirt 
front which the kindly gaslight rendered white. The inner 
collar of implied linen rolled back to expose his full, creased 
throat, beneath which a dusty black satin bow did duty as a 
necktie. 

He laid his hands lightly together, adjusting the finger 
tips of one hand to those of the other with delicate care, 
and sat with downcast eyes, apparently pondering on sub- 
jects which required the exclusion of all outward objects 
for their successful consideration. 

After the last tramp and shuffle of entering feet had sub- 
sided, he raised his eyes and gazed steadily before him with 
a look which expressed a dawning recognition of the wait- 
ing audience, then rose and lumbered heavily to the front. 

“ Friends, fellow-seekers,” said he in a thick yet pene- 
trating voice, “ I am here to-night, not in my capacity of 
teacher, orator or physician of souls ; for once my 
direct mission is laid aside that I may introduce to you, and 
aid one whom I consider greater than myself as representing 
the Eternal Feminine, Mrs. Elsie Radner Hyland.” 

As he spoke, a slight dark woman emerged from the side 
door and glided to his side. She was dressed in a manner 
at once shabby and theatrical, a scarf of crimson gauze 
being wound around her thin throat and falling over the 
front of her worn black silk dress. She was apparently 
about forty years old, rather younger than her sponsor. 
The hoar frost of impending age lay lightly on the edges of 
her dark hair. Her eyes were large, luminous, almost black. 
The mouth and teeth were decidedly bad. She bowed in 
passing, with the air of one who makes a reluctant conces- 


loo 


AS COMMON MORTALS . 


sion to established usages, and began immediately to speak 
in a voice slightly metallic though musical in tone. 

“ I have little to say to you in my own person,” she said, 
rapidly. “ I feel myself charged with no special message 
to you from my soul. I shall be to-night but the conductor 
for other and mightier influences. I shall proceed in my 
usual method.” 

She seated herself in the chair which her companion had 
vacated. 

“ Dr. Balland, will you place me in communication ? ” she 
said. 

The man took his place before her, making passes to and 
fro through the air with his thick hands. Her eyelids 
trembled, fluttered, fell. At the end of each pass Dr. Bal- 
land shook his hands violently as if wringing water from 
the tips of his fingers. It was perhaps five minutes before 
the final mesmeric gesture was given, and the glassy stare 
in his eyes became an informing look as he turned to the 
audience. 

“ She is completely under the influence,” he said in his 
woolly voice. 

Mrs. Hyland sat motionless for some moments. Then a 
shudder relaxed the tense rigidity of her frame. She drew 
deep quivering breaths. At last she started into an upright 
position, rose to her feet, and advanced to the front of the 
platform. Milly looked up into her wide open eyes and 
trembled with a vague fear. They looked straight before 
the medium, but not with the satisfied gaze of eyes that are 
fixed on a meeting object. Did you ever hold a cat before 
a mirror and see the blank, unreflecting stare in the lumi- 
nous globes of yellow light as the creature impatiently turns 
its head from side to side ? The eyes of Mrs. Hyland pre- 
sented the same unresponsive surface becoming suddenly 
shallow and devoid of human intelligence. Suddenly her 


A PROPHETESS. 


IOt 


slender body began to sway like a willow wand shaken by an 
idle hand. She stretched out her arms and began to 
speak. 

“ Listen to me, you people, bound by the body, chained to 
the ground. You eat and drink and are merry, for you say to 
yourselves, to morrow we die ! But how shall you perish ? 
Calm on your couches, tended by loving hands ? I say to 
you no ! A rain of sharp drops of blood shall smite you to 
earth. Fire and sword shall ravage your homes. 
You shall cry out and there shall be none to hear. You 
stand “ heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time.” 
How spend you your heritage ? In feasting and dancing 
and forgetfulness. The tents of plenty cover you ; the 
harps of pleasure are loud in your ears. Who shall assail 
you ? 

“ Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion drawing nigher, 

Glares at one that nods and winks before a slowly dying fire.” 

Not these alone shall torment you. Force meets force 
here. The voice of the quick-eared may awaken you, and 
the cunning of the man subdue the strength of the lion. 
Ah, your cunning shall fail you in one day ! Over you, under 
you, about you, among you, silent, unperceived, mighty, an 
angry host is swarming. Do you feel it, do you know it, 
you dull men and women ? Who are these that press upon 
you ? Battalions of the mighty dead ! Legions of spirits 
never tainted by contact with earth ! Armies of terrible 
angels ! Forces of divine demons ! Ah, all the powers of 
the air are upon you ! I see them ! I join them ! I am 
swept along on the resistless circle ! They dash me into 
the whirlpool of avenging distruction ! But I struggle and 
cry out as I go. I call to you as I am borne along on the 
current of souls. The humanity in me still flames. Save 
yourselves, save yourselves, for a day of wrath is at hand. 


102 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Leave your books and your games. Leave your dealings 
in money, your bindings in marriage. Master the alphabet 
which shall help you to read the secrets of the ages. Place 
yourselves in relation with the souls who would rescue you. 
Nearer, nearer rolls the dark wheel ! Closer, closer presses 
the battling throng ! Mercy, mercy on these doomed ones ! 
Help, help, kind spirits of pure fire ! Men and women ! 
Fly ! Fly ! — Ah, my God ! ” 

With a sharp shriek the medium fell prostrate on the 
platform. An answering sob of excitement burst from some 
women in the audience, Eleanor Reese among them. 

Several men started to leap on the platform. Dr. Bal- 
land advanced hastily to the side of the fallen figure. 

“ Let her alone,” he said. “ Your assistance is not 
needed.” 

“ She will die ! ” cried a tearful spinster. “ Oh, some 
one help Mrs. Hyland ! ” 

“ Mrs. Hyland is not here,” said Dr. Balland. “ Her 
physical conditions this evening are not good. Her body 
has not been adequate to give full expression to the spirit 
which has taken possession of it.” 

“ Possession ! It’s more like obsession ! ” said a lank 
woman who evidently objected to the development of 
esoteric truth through any other agency than her own. 

Dr. Balland darted a look of thoroughly mundane anger 
at the speaker. “ Mrs. Hyland has long since passed 
through the stage, evidently still familiar to others present, 
when the spirits of evil can obtain possession of her. I must 
request silence. The soul is returning to its tenement, 
now forsaken by the warning angel. Do not retard its 
approach.” 

Mrs. Hyland’s gasping breath became slower, more even. 
The convulsive twitching of her limbs subsided. She 
raised herself on one arm and looked about her with inquir- 


A PROPHETESS. 


103 


ing wonder. She held out her hand to Dr. Balland, who 
helped her to arise to her feet and seat herself in the chair 
again. She leaned her head back against its finial orna- 
ment and appeared to fall into a natural slumber. After a 
moment or two Dr. Balland spoke to her, addressing ques- 
tions which she answered in a natural voice, keeping her 
eyes closed. 

“ Who is the spirit that has just addressed us ? ” 

“ That I am not permitted to reveal.” 

“ Will that spirit visit us again this evening ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Are you ready to be questioned by any one seeking 
information ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Dr. Balland addressed the audience. “ Mrs. Hyland is 
now in a partial trance, favorable to those who wish to 
inform themselves concerning departed friends, also to 
those who would inquire as to the conditions of spirit life.” 

There was a silence which reminded Milly of the inter- 
vals between prayers at the Friday evening meetings of the 
Wentworth Street Presbyterian Church. She was violently 
excited, and the homely recollection fell strangely on her 
exalted mood. 

Eleanor Reese had prepared her mind for the reception 
of ideas which would have shocked and terrified the simply 
bred Milly of a year ago, and there was nothing repulsive 
to the fervent-souled, ill-educated girl in the scene she had 
just witnessed. Her religious life had long been a lonely 
one ; that her parents were governed by principle in all the 
relations of existence she saw clearly, but the exercise of 
this unfailing rectitude was restricted by a very limited set 
of motives, strict honesty in dealings with tradespeople, 
unswerving affection for kinsmen, delicate orderliness in 
the arrangement of house and business, sincere kindness of 


104 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


disposition. These homely virtues, thought Milly, would 
have existed in them under any circumstances, quite inde- 
pendently of the religion which was represented in their 
lives by strict observance of the Sabbath and family prayers, 
modest donations to missionary societies, and an honest 
belief in the mediatory powers of Christ, coupled with the 
assurance of final salvation. To a child of Milly’s temper, 
burning to devote herself to a mysteriously beneficent cause, 
full of the poetic, mystical enthusiasm of a deeply and 
romantically religious nature, rapidly awakening to the 
artistic and intellectual limitations of her lot, the rare qual- 
ity of this simple excellence was unappreciated. Her 
father’s mental growth was hampered by his overworked 
body, and her mother’s sweet soul moved contentedly in its 
small orbit, deaf to both the discords and harmonies which 
alternately offended and delighted the spiritual ear of her 
daughter. The luxuriant, untrained imagination had trailed 
stray and unsupported. 

Eleanor Reese, with her mysticism, her moral and intel- 
lectual aspirations, her liberating freedom from the petty 
cares of a restricted income, had seemed to Milly the serene 
incarnation of perfect womanhood. At seventeen Milly 
was younger in her appreciation of worldly values than her 
Cousin Helen had been at seven, and her exuberant intel- 
lectual development was utterly unshaped. The hysterical 
eloquence of Mrs. Hyland’s “ inspirational ” speech spoke 
powerfully to the sensitive, undisciplined soul of the young 
girl, and when she saw Eleanor’s lovely face alight with 
enthusiasm she felt that she had received the warrant for a 
full, assenting rapture. 

“ Isn’t she wonderful ? ” she whispered. 

“ A prophetess ! ” was the answer. 

In Miss Reese the feeling awakened was a desire to pen- 
etrate to the depths of the mysteries of occult truth proba- 


A PROPHETESS. 


bly possessed in full by this nineteenth century sibyl. Elea- 
nor honestly believed that the secrets of the universe could 
not be intrusted to one more trustworthy or appreciative 
than herself. But the broad humanitarian impulses ani- 
mating Milly beat in her with a lower pulse. In Milly’s 
mind, the thought of the spiritual personal blessings accrued 
by the aspiring hierophant through the enlarged domain of 
the soul in which new vistas of knowledge were opened, 
was subordinate to the desire to devote all these extraordi- 
nary acquirements to the human race, apparently in great 
danger, both from the point of view of the Calvinistic 
teachers of her childhood, and the undoubtedly more expe- 
rienced observation of the spirit who had found in Mrs. 
Hyland a fitting instrument to convey a note of alarm to 
the sealed ears of mankind. Do not laugh at poor Milly. 
Given a spirit generously endowed with conscious power, 
and a native bias toward triumphant self-sacrifice, and the 
prosaic conditions of life in the second rate circles of a sec- 
ond rate American city, will hardly supply the medium for a 
consistent excellence of character and conduct. The child 
had received only the conventional smattering of education 
considered necessary to fit a woman for the elegant court- 
esies and graver duties of life, and even the laying on of 
this approved veneer of knowledge had been sadly inter- 
fered with by delicate health. A fine mind fighting its way 
up to maturity on insufficient nourishment, will be apt to 
make but a sorry success of itself, yet no defective educa- 
tion, no limitation of observation and experience can utterly 
destroy the fine effect of a native nobility of mental consti- 
tution. On the rare occasions of Milly’s visits to New York 
she had liked to rumble up the crowded length of Broad- 
•way in the gaudy inconvenience of the stages, watching the 
moving mass of humanity that surged up and down on 
either side. A tender pity for these unknown people 


io6 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


moved her. “ Each one,” thought little Milly, “ has his 
own care, anxiety and sorrow. And they rush along, 
uncomforted by the thought that they are all suffering 
together.” 

A sense of the unity of the race was ill expressed in these 
simple words, and a passion for humanity was born in the 
soft heart that had been pierced in childhood by the dumb 
woes of friendless dogs and kittens. Among the brethren 
in the Wentworth Street Church she had found a disposi- 
tion to be interested only in that small portion of the race 
which was endeavoring to enter heaven through the reliable 
door of the denomination which they represented, and her 
quick, though ill-instructed comprehension, had taught 
her that this body of believers bore a ludicrous dispropor- 
tion to the number of human souls then resident on the 
earth, to say nothing of the vanished and expected genera- 
tions of men. She had the optimism of her years and 
ignorance, and firmly believed in the final right adjustment 
of affairs, but in her heart glowed the restless fire of* one 
who is not content to believe in and wait for the ultimate 
triumph of good, but who longs to be actively engaged in 
bringing about the apotheosis of the race. The egotism of 
this desire was necessarily not apparent to her. “ I resign 
victory and martyrdom alike,” says the disciplined soul. 
“ Only let that which the world waits for come to pass.” 
But the energetic, unchastened nature which had stirred 
the slim child into the belief that her conversion was one of 
the acceptable proofs of the efficacy of divine grace, made 
the growing girl feel the insistent need of an acknowledged 
worth and work in the hastening of the millenium. 

Who that is gentle of heart will not feel for the fore- 
shadowed disappointment as tender a pity as that awakened 
by the commoner pangs of unrequited love? Surely a 
spiritual passion has its fine issues, its heart-crushing trag- 


A PROPHETESS. 


107 

edies, as well as its inevitable comedies, equally with the 
familiar passion born of human need. 

Milly waited breathless as Mrs. Hyland sat in motionless 
expectancy. At last a figure robed in rusty black arose, 
trembling, and in a half-audible, tear-choked voice, said : 
“ I would like to know if my little boy is safe with his 
grandma in heaven. Seems as though he must be lonely 
without his pa and me. He wasn’t but a mite when — ” She 
sank back into her seat sobbing convulsively. 

“ Address the medium directly,” said Dr. Balland. 

The woman arose with a painful effort and staggered 
down the aisle until she stood before the platform, impa- 
tiently shaking off a clumsy hand that sought to detain her. 

“.Will you please tell me if my little boy is happy now ? ” 
she said, in a voice of tremulous urgency, raising her wet 
eyes to Mrs. Hyland’s impassive face. 

The dark eyes of the medium slowly opened and fixed 
themselves on the flushed, common face of the bereaved 
mother with calm intensity. 

“ The child is here,” she said at last. 

“ Oh ! ” cried the woman, wildly ; “ let me speak to him ! 
Willie, you know ma, don’t you ? You ain’t forgot poor 
ma so soon ! ” Then, with a sudden, distrustful reaction — 
“ How shall I know it’s my boy ? ” 

“ He has fair hair, and blue eyes — his cheeks are very red, 
and he wears a little red bow at his collar,” said Mrs. 
Hyland, in monotonous tones, apparently looking through 
her interlocutor to a man who had shambled up the aisle, 
and who stood with all a husband’s shame-faced, half-angry 
acceptance of a wife’s public agitation, behind the weeping 
woman. There was a bit of limp crape tied awkwardly 
around the old felt hat he held in his hairy hand. Like the 
woman, he was fair and florid of complexion, blonde-haired 
and blue-eyed. The sullen resignation of his face turned 


1 08 AS COMMON MOR TA LS. 

into awed wonder as he listened to the descriptive words. 
The woman burst into renewed tears. 

“ That’s him ! That’s him ! Bill,” turning to her hus- 
band, “ don’t you remember the little red bow he had for 
best ? ” Tears were in the father’s eyes also. There was 
a homely pathos in the mournful delight of these humble 
people who would certainly select the brightest known color 
for a “ best ” bow. 

“ Hasn’t my own baby got any thing to say 
to me ? ” sobbed the poor mother with credulous rap- 
ture. 

“ He says,” proceeded Mrs. Hyland, “ that he is happy ; 
that he is with your mother. He bids you keep near him 
by frequent consultation with the spirits. He can only say 
that, with his love and good-by.” 

“ Good-by, my darling little boy ! ” sobbed the woman. 
“ Can’t I get one more word ? ” she pleaded, and then 
meekly suffered her husband to lead her away. 

Good Mr. Archer, who had been fidgeting in his seat, 
tearfully conscious of the grief of the afflicted parents, and 
awed by the consolatory visit of the little ghost, yet impatient 
of their absorption of the valuable time and “ force ” of the 
medium, now popped impetuously to the front. 

“ I wish,” he said, with a blush of diffident pride overflow- 
ing the well dried roses in his round cheeks, “ to know if 
the work upon which I am at present engaged has any pros- 
pect of success ? I should be very glad if there are any 
influences present of an — er — literary character, who might 
— er — accord to an humble though earnest worker a word 
of admonition or — er — encouragement.” 

The dark eyes studied the child-like face of the gray- 
haired man. “ I am bidden by the spirit of Emanuel Swe- 
denborg to say to you that your work will be successful. 
That you may not witness its success while you remain in 


A PROPHETESS, 


109 


the body, but that you will surely behold it when you pass 
into the next stage of existence.” 

Mr. Archer mopped his shining brow with a vast silk 
handkerchief as he took his seat. He was but human, and 
was a little disappointed that he should not live to witness 
the moral and literary success of the little pamphlet, which, 
owing to the absence of any definite information as to the 
publishing resources of the spirit world, was destined to 
make its first appearance in printed form on this imperfect 
planet. But he soon relapsed into the usual state of radiant 
content, consoled by the thought that the august spirit of 
Emanuel Swedenborg should consider him worthy of a per- 
sonal communication, and feeling strong enough to bear the 
slight esteem of his contemporaries on earth, since his merits 
were evidently appreciated in the upper circles of heaven. 

Milly was suddenly startled by hearing Eleanor’s voice, 
with the tremor of feminine timidity in it, ask : “ Are you 
informed as to the conditions of thought in the next world ? 
And are we to enter with our present mental equipment, o r 
are a new set of faculties to come into our possession ? ” 

The scrutinizing inscrutable glance turned on the hand- 
some face flushed with the excitement of becoming the 
central figure of the moment, its wonted complacent amia- 
bility intensified by a sense of condescension in thus yield- 
ing to the nobly democratic impulses which had impelled its 
owner to thus identify herself with the evening’s proceed- 
ings. 

“ That will depend upon the individual,” said Mrs. Hy- 
land, slowly. “ Many will need much development before 
they can enter into the active life of the next sphere. You 
will not. You are already fitted for the immediate assump- 
tion of your duties.” 

Milly looked at her friend with proud delight, happy in 
this additional proof of the supernaturally reliable source of 


no 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Mrs. Hyland’s information. Gratification of a more per- 
sonal character illumined Miss Reese’s fine countenance, and 
she found herself bearing the looks directed toward her 
with more of elation than discomposure. 

Questions were put to Mrs. Hyland on subjects of a 
wide variety, from the probable state of the stock market a 
week hence to the state of the development attained in the 
next world by souls of negroes. 

Mrs. Hyland answered them all with the oracular wisdom 
displayed in her first replies. Low murmurs of “ Wonder- 
ful! ” “ I never heard any thing like it ! ” were audible among 
the audience from time to time. At last Dr. Balland 
spoke. 

“ If there is any one present who wishes to try the exper- 
iment of placing a folded paper, letter, document of any sort 
on the brow of Mrs. Hyland, in order that she may describe 
the nature of the writing and the writer, she is now ready 
for this final test.” 

A young man, who had evidently come to scoff and 
remained to pray, advanced up the aisle with much confu- 
sion and handed a letter to Mrs. Hyland. It was inclosed 
in an envelope, square in shape, blue-green in color, with 
the letter M. ornamentally raised upon the flap. It was 
crossed by diagonal lines of a deeper green, and had evidently 
just been resealed, a suspicious dampness still lingering 
about the flap. The superscription was in a hand familiar to 
ali of us, delicate, inelegant, uncertain, with much black shad- 
ing applied in very improbable places for the emphatic down 
stroke of the pen. None of the huge, pointed dashes which 
indicate a young person of the highest fashion in the writer 
were apparent. A lead pencil had evidently drawn lines 
across the envelope to serve as guide for the address, the 
success of which had been unhappily complicated by the 
presence of the green diagonals, the pencil marks having 


A PROPHETESS. 


Ill 


been partially rubbed away after the ink was dry. The 
envelope bore the Goverick City postmark, and was 
addressed to “James Flint, Esquire, 171 Hilson street.” 

The young fellow handed it up with a mixture of swagger 
and shyness for which some atonement was made by a vivid 
blush, betraying the presence of some real feeling. Mrs. 
Hyland looked at him ; at the cheap and florid plaid of his 
ready made suit; at the violent color of his neck-scarf drawn 
through a Milton gold ring in which an imitation cameo dis- 
played its factitious charms. His hair and eyes were 
extremely light, and the coarse molding of his irregular 
features was softened by an expression of fatuous inno- 
cence. 

She looked at the letter with eyes that merely seemed to 
brush it with a passing glance, then, leaning forward, 
addressed the youth: 

“ Come up here, please, and place it on my forehead 
yourself. That will aid in establishing communication.” 

The young man stumbled ujp the steps of the platform, 
crimson, abashed, yet enjoying the cheap prominence of his 
position, being one of those simple souls to whom publicity 
of any sort short of disgraceful is dear because of its rarity. 
With some trepidation, and after much dropping of the letter, 
he succeeded in placing it on Mrs. Hyland’s forehead. 
After a little she spoke: 

“ I am not illumined with regard to the nature of the cor- 
respondence, but I can give a description of your correspond- 
ent, I think, and an intimation as to her effect on your future 
life. She has dark hair and eyes, and straight features. 
She curls her hair very much. She will be of importance 
in your career. She will help you. You met her recently ; 
you will meet soon again. Be careful not to offend as you 
once did.” 

Awe, delight, and wonder were expressed in the vacant 


1 1 2 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


face of the young man. “ Her eyes ain’t regularly black,” 
he said, “ nor yet her hair, but they’re considerable darker 
than mine. But how in time ! ” His feelings over- 

came him and prevented further speech. He turned and 
blundered his way back to his seat in a tumult of excited 
satisfaction. 

Something in this last episode jarred upon Milly. The 
vulgarity of it seemed oddly incongruous with the impas- 
sioned speech she had listened to in the early part of the 
evening, swept along into acquiescence by its half-frenzied 
fervor, fascinated by the wild grace of motion and gesture 
with which it was delivered. The remarkable dramatic 
power of the medium drew half its force from her genuine 
belief in herself as the divinely appointed organ of celestial 
speech, and it was in the reality of this feeling that her 
influence over her hearers lay. She regarded the exercise 
of the keen judgment which had animated the tricky clever- 
ness of her fortunate replies to the various seekers, as a par- 
donable supplement to the forces of supernatural agencies, 
and with all her shrewdness, she was only vaguely aware of 
how much she was aided by the predisposition to believe in 
her, engendered in her hearers by her convincing ability 
as a platform speaker. 

“ Did you like that, Eleanor ? " whispered Milly, as the 
gratified lover passed them. 

Do you like the scenes of a religious ‘ revival ’ among 
your mission scholars ? ” said Eleanor, quickly. “ Are the 
methods required to waken your maid to a sense of her sins 
efficacious in your case ? In spiritualism some natures are 
only impressed by the physical phenomena. A tipping table 
would be a far more powerful argument to that man who 
has just taken his seat than a direct revelation from 
the Apostle Paul through the lips of a perfectly de- 
veloped medium. That speech of Mrs. Hyland had no 


A PROPHETESS. 


XI 3 


effect on him until he saw her fall ; the physical effect on 
the body was apprehended, but not the spiritual truths she 
uttered. Each evokes something of his own nature in the 
manifestations and replies." 

Eleanor spoke in a low, rapid undertone, and with 
kindling eyes. Milly was dissatisfied, but the spell of the 
speech was still upon her. 

Mrs. Hyland, with a look of great weariness, and with 
that same unwilling bow, rose and passed from the plat- 
form. There was a stir of departure in the room, but Dr. 
Balland arrested the general movement. 

“ One moment, please. I shall not detain you long. 
Mrs. Hyland and myself are interesting, ourselves in the 
founding of a cure for souls and bodies, an institution at 
once educational and sanitary. We have secured our 
house and land, and are hoping to open the establishment 
early next spring, a little less than a year from now, when 
our arrangements shall be perfected. We hope to receive 
patients and scholars whom we may cure and instruct, and 
to form at the same time a nucleus for a new and better 
social system which shall ultimately govern civilization. It 
may not be considered amiss if I remind you that the 
laborer is worthy of his hire ; that the exertions of Mrs. 
Hyland and myself in the cause of progress merit at least 
the reward of a bare subsistence supplied to us. Yet even 
this we are willing to painfully secure for ourselves, if you 
will but give proof of your willingness to aid us in our 
organized effort to bring about a better state of affairs in 
this threatened world." 

As the basket, passed by an eager volunteer whom it 
would be uncharitable to suppose actuated by a desire 
to thus escape solicitation, came to Eleanor and Milly, its 
wicker bottom was seen to be but scantily covered by coin of 
the smallest denomination known in our currency. Eleanor 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


114 

took from her handsome purse a five dollar bill, which she 
dropped in, creating thus a manifestly favorable impression 
on the mind of the improvised collector. 

In Milly’s rather shabby little pocket-book lurked a 
quarter, a bit of “ newspaper ” poetry, some samples of 
floss silk, and, in a private compartment, a roll of ten one 
dollar bills. Poor Milly had little spending money, though 
her wants were indulgently supplied, the necessities of life 
in the Barron household combining with Mr. Barron's 
unfortunate tendency to speculation to restrict luxuries. 
The ten bills represented many a girlish self-denial, espe- 
cially trying to one of Milly’s lavish disposition, and had 
been destined to save papa expense in the purchase of a 
hat which she felt to be conventionally necessary, and also 
desirable as tending to the confirmation of her dubious 
charms. The nervous little hand fumbled uneasily for a 
moment with the inner clasp of the pocket-book, then 
snapped it open. The carefully folded little wad of bills 
dropped unreservedly into the basket, and the institution, at 
once sanitary and educational, was ten dollars in. 


CHAPTER XI. 


A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. 

T HE even current of life among Milly’s relatives flowed 
peaceably along. Mr. White's growing importance in 
Goverick greatly enhanced his enjoyment of an existence 
which, even under less favorable circumstances, would have 
been greatly to his taste. Aunt Lucy, as the sphere of her 
behavior enlarged, was unconscious of any demand for an 
enlargement of soul to correspond with the altered condi- 
tions of her life, but was able to maintain her wonted dis- 
cretion and her husband’s devotion. 

The years had dealt less kindly with other members of 
the Harris group. Aunt Lena was not such a pretty Aunt 
Lena as she had been when Milly fell in love with her seven 
years ago, and she no longer sang sentimental ballads. But 
her voice sounded sweeter as it crooned cradle songs to her 
baby, and if the twins had robbed her of her roses, it was 
only to transplant them in four round cheeks, where she 
liked their appearance even better than in her own. Mrs. 
Elkins had developed a settled misanthropy, to which the 
consciousness of Lucy’s second set of real china contri- 
buted not a little, and her husband felt that each year gave 
fresh indication of his value in the eyes of the Lord, as his 
commercial chastenings and his family increased together. 

The Harris brothers were spoken of now by their sisters 
in tones of forbearing pity. Gertrude had induced John to 
abandon Goverick, an unprecedented desertion from the 
family ranks, and take up his residence in New York. There 


II 6 AS COMMON A/OR TA L S. 

she plunged into the wildest extravagance, sometimes dis- 
playing two entirely new silk dresses in a season, never pro- 
viding for an extra pair of sleeves, and at last crowned her 
folly by sending her children to dancing school. The ritu- 
alistic Maria had been guilty of a dereliction more serious, 
as involving eternal interests. She had publicly seceded to 
the Episcopal communion, drawing Edward with her 
Edward Harris, that had been received into Dr. Lowler’s 
church when he was thirteen years old, and had been a firm 
Presbyterian, in good and regular standing, like his father 
before him, until he married that girl ! But even Mrs. 
White could not treat Maria with consistent severity, for 
there was a tiny new mound in the family lot that Maria 
visited often, a basket of white flowers on her arm. These 
sisters-in-law, mothers all of them, thought of that little 
grave, some remembering others not much longer, and were 
rather gentle with the erring Maria. 

One evening, shortly after the night of the Hyland-Bal- 
land meeting, Mr. and Mrs. Barron and Milly were to meet 
Mr. and Mrs. Elkins and Helen at dinner at Mrs. White’s, 
that worthy woman in naming six o’clock as the hour, hav- 
ing made a protesting concession to society as represented 
in Goverick upper circles. These family parties were rather 
rarer now than of yore, owing to the spreading ramifications 
of kinship and the increased demands of life. The cheer- 
ful placidity of Mrs. Barron’s face contrasted agreeably 
with the settled discontent and the monotonous composure 
expressed in the countenances of the other sisters. The 
three brothers-in-law represented types familiar to all Amer- 
icans, each sharply differing from the others. The small, 
keen blue eyes of Mr. White could flash with an astute 
intelligence that enlivened the jovial complacency of the 
large, rosy round of his broad face. A tinge of red in the 
scanty hair and thicker mustache and whiskers gave a hint 


A CASE OE CONSCIENCE. 117 

of the irascibility which made the exercise of the implied 
penetration rather formidable. One could see that he 
would govern his subordinates with domineering kindliness, 
meet his equals with hot-headed assertiveness, and bow 
before his superiors with angry impotence. His propor- 
tions were aldermanic, but redeemed from coarseness by a 
pair of dainty, dimpled white hands, which gave indication 
of a silken strand of real refinement woven in with the 
serviceable rope of his character. The conscious, prosper- 
ous American, acknowledging with pride his humble birth, 
and exulting harmlessly in his merited success in life, was 
Mr. White, and America would be in a sorrier plight than 
she has yet known if it were not for the number among us 
of these self-important, clean-handed little men, who act 
nobly, from instinct rather than reason, in all commercial 
and national crises. 

Mr. Barron’s face indicated a rather finer order of being, 
but a less complete and happy man. A high intelligence, 
smothered and repressed in the difficult task of bread- 
winning, disturbed the meditative, inquiring glance of the 
dark eyes with the sad hint of an unfulfilled purpose. The 
delicate outline of the features, the fine brown hair, were 
the familiar tokens of a temperament sensitive to morbid- 
ness, a nature with every intellectual endowment for meet- 
ing life fairly, but lacking the stolid resistance to meet its 
blows prepared and undismayed. Milly’s dark eyes were 
her .father’s gift, and so also was the pathetic, innocent 
wonder with which she met each unkind word of foe or 
friend, each heavy stroke of fortune. 

Mr. Elkins was certainly a fine looking man, though he 
would have been recognized in any quarter of the globe as 
an undeniable Yankee. Very tall, and lank without ungain- 
liness, with a smooth, pale, oval face, narrow gray eyes and 
high features, and a sweeping length of fair beard to match 


i iS 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


the shining hair still thick on his small head. The narrow 
forehead was rather lofty, and there was 'a look of brooding 
self-concentration in the eyes. Mr. Elkins did not like his 
brothers-in-law, though he believed himself to be as thor- 
oughly attached to them as the nature of their failings 
would permit. Mr. White’s growing prosperity and promi- 
nence were bitter to a man who was conscious of more val- 
uable qualifications for meeting the public eye, and certain 
small social successes, for which Mr. Barron was indebted 
to his better birth, and a certain grave elegance of manner 
which the world’s attrition had never worn away, were 
thorns in the flesh of the less fortunate brother-in-law, who 
felt that his righteous contempt for society would flourish 
better if Providence had placed him in a position to impress 
it with more dampening success upon the hundred respect- 
able individuals who represented the social body to him. 
Helen’s face was a miniature copy of her father’s, but more 
intelligence shone from her eyes, and her dainty chin showed 
no corresponding deficiency to that hidden beneath the 
ample, silky beard. 

“ I’m glad you fellows could come here to-night,” said 
Mr. White, cordially, as the soup was removed, and he 
awaited the appearance of the fish, much impressed with his 
Lucy’s skill in arranging that comparatively novel cere- 
mony, a “ course dinner.” “ Half a dozen men will be in 
here later to see about the election parade, and I want you 
to meet some of them. There’s Ferrard, now. I expect 
him a good deal earlier than the others, for we’ve got some 
things to talk over together. Ferrard’s a man, I tell you ! 
You don’t like him, eh, Elkins ? ” 

“ A dangerous man, in some respects,” said Mr. Elkins. 
“ A man of no religious beliefs that I ever heard of, and as 
likely as not to turn out an avowed infidel.” 

“ I wasn’t considering him in that light,” said Mr. 


A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. 


19 


White, rather brusquely. “ You've heard him speak, 
Barron ? " 

“Yes; a brilliant fellow. He has a future before him." 

“ Do you know his great crony, Haslett ? " 

“ No." 

“ There are points about Haslett," said Mr. White, judi- 
cially, “ but he hasn’t the go in him that Ferrard has. He 
won’t make himself felt in the same way." 

“ The question is how to make one’s self felt at all in 
these days," said Mr. Barron, rather sadly. 

“ You may bet your best hat Ferrard doesn't question 
that , " said Mr. White, emphatically. “ The only inquiry 
with him is — when ? ” 

“ I have heard Miss Reese speak of both those gentle- 
men," said Milly. “ She knows Mr. Haslett very well." 

“ Ah, he’s a neighbor of hers," said Mr. White, who 
prided himself on the extent of his local information. “ Seen 
much of her lately, Milly ? I expect to see you both come 
out in coats and trowsers, one of these fine days, and start 
off on a lecturing tour together.” 

Milly was used to Uncle Jo’s feelers in the direction of 
the jocular, and she laughed good-humoredly. 

“ I think Miss Reese is very sweet and pretty," said 
Kitty, amiably. She was a neat little blue-eyed and brown- 
haired lady now, with a tiny but womanly figure. 

“ Oh, she’s a real acquisition to the Woman’s Righters," 
said Mr. White, jovially. “ It isn’t often that they get 
such good-looking girls to join ’em as Milly and her 
friend." 

Mr. White and Milly were the best of friends. He did 
not approve of her particularly, and thought his little Kitty 
a much greater success, but the loving disposition displayed 
by his incomprehensible niece was a sure passport to the 
capacious heart of Uncle Jo, and he felt for her a benevo- 


i26 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


lent pity, as a spoiled child who might “ make a nice little 
woman yet, if Mark and Mary weren't such fools about her.” 
It occurred to him that night, as he looked at her in the 
midst of his benignant raillery, that Milly wasn’t a bad look- 
ing girl after all. Something might be made of her yet from 
a physical point of view. She was not to his taste, however, 
which in common with that of most uncultured men of his 
stamp, preferred the diminutive and rather unhealthy types 
of womanhood, as indicative of refinement and mild domes- 
tic virtues. She was nearly as tall as her tall father, and her 
mother’s slight figure looked dwarfish and narrow beside the 
young shape, oddly massive and heavy. Her figure gave 
promise of a splendid maturity, but presented now scarcely 
more than the clumsy outline of an overgrown child. The 
ordinarily pale cheeks were tinged at times with an exquisite 
pink, which deepened the dusky shadows under the dark 
eyes, liquid and flashing like great brown gems. The beauty 
of her deep red hair, undulating in immense waves and 
spirals, was by no means apparent to the undeveloped taste 
of her unadmiring relatives. The features were like the 
figure, heavy, but there were curves about the full mouth 
denoting a ready, painful sensibility. 

“Well,” said Mr. White, heartily, “ we’ve got three pretty 
good-looking girls here ! If the young fry in your family 
and Lena’s, Sarah, to say nothing of Ed and John’s young- 
sters, come up in as good shape as the specimens we’ve got 
on hand to-night, it’ll do the Harrises proud.” 

Mrs. White looked slightly sarcastic. Would nothing 
teach Josiah discrimination ? Kitty’s perfections were 
apparent to the mother’s eye, and a genuine fondness for 
Helen made her aware of that young lady’s attractions. 
How could Josiah name that great, overgrown Milly in the 
same day with those pretty, lady-like girls ? 

“ Guess you young folks had better come into the parlor 


A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. 


1 2 I 


this evening and make the meeting spicy,” said Mr. White, 
still on compliment intent. 

“ No, no, papa ! You mustn’t think of such a thing,” 
interposed his wife. 

“ What’s the use of having a daughter if you can’t have 
her ’round when there’s company ? But I was otily joking, 
though I don’t know as there’d be any harm done if they 
did come in.” 

“I didn’t mean there was any harm in it, Josiah ; only 
those gentlemen won’t care to see three girls just out of 
school. Helen, who made your dress ? ” 

“ I made it myself, Aunt Lucy.” 

“ Well, you are a smart one ! You’ve got a help in her, 
Sarah.” 

“ Helen’s very capable,” said Mrs. Elkins, pleased. She 
was afraid of her daughter, but, mother-like, was proud of 
her also. 

Helen was a graceful little creature, whose chief beauty 
was a complexion like tinted porcelain. She was singularly 
artificial in bearing and manner, and was a great favorite 
with the older members of her mother’s family, whom she 
consulted on household and business matters with a prac- 
ticed staidness of demeanor, that won unfailing commen- 
dation. Yet she by no means relished the general descrip- 
tion of herself as a “ nice little thing ” ; she had inherited 
with her father’s fair hair his envious disposition, and had 
added to it on her own account a cleverness not possessed 
in equal measure by that sapient-looking but rather shallow 
man. Her likes and dislikes were few, but her cousin Milly 
inspired in her the strongest of the latter. Milly ’s demon- 
strative, emotional nature roused an active distaste in the 
more restrained maiden, and the tropical style of her mind 
and person awakened a jealous repugnance, long since 
hardened into cold dislike. 


122 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Beneath the snowy calm of that slight girlish exterior 
was hidden a feverish, ambitious little soul, burning for dis- 
tinction, not merely social in character, for Helen was one 
of those unfortunate people endowed with excellent will 
power, the exercise of which is consciously limited by a 
narrow intellect. The practical force and determination 
which was lacking in Millicent was present in the smaller 
woman, who raged in her silent fashion that her cousin 
should possess the gifts which were after all well-nigh use- 
less to her, while she herself was conscious at once of the 
power to act, and the hopeless limitation entailed by her 
meager mental equipment. The perception of these facts 
was perhaps her best intellectual attainment, yet she was 
far from contemptible in intelligence. Her social instincts 
were far sharper than her cousin’s, though her range of 
observation had been even more restricted, and she would 
never make the blunders to which poor large-hearted, dim- 
sighted Milly was constantly liable. 

The family group at the table was slowly demolishing the 
“ brick ” of vanilla and strawberry cream which was the 
finish extraordinary of all Goverick dinners, when a ring at 
the bell and the opening and closing of the door were fol- 
lowed by the entrance of a gentleman into the dining-room. 

“ The servant told me I should find you here, Mr. 
White,” said Ferrard, smiling. Mrs. White dropped her 
napkin in despair. The economical spirit which had 
prompted her to train a cheap maid into polite usages was 
daunted. 

“ That’s all right,” said Mr. White, unable to perceive 
the full enormity of the proceeding. “ I’m glad to see you 
in any room in my house. Draw up a chair and have some 
cream with us ; these long dinners Lucy’s taken to giving 
us have one advantage ; you can receive your friends along 
with the dessert. You’ve met my wife, I believe, and Mr, 


A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. 


123 


Elkins. Mrs. Elkins, Mr. Barron, and Mrs. Barron, my 
daughter Kitty and my nieces, Helen and Milly. One of 
’em belongs to Elkins and the other to Barron. Mr. Fer- 
rard, ladies and gentlemen.” Ferrard bowed with radiant 
gravity, and at last succumbed to the chair with which the 
distressed maid, immediately aware of her blunder, had 
been endeavoring to shovel him from his feet during Mr. 
White’s introduction. 

“What a beautiful man ! ” thought Milly, looking at him 
with pleasure. And so thought Helen, her eyes modestly 
raised to his brilliant face. Ferrard thought nothing in 
particular of this fairly interesting family group, though he 
took them all in in one keen, comprehensive glance; least of 
all that two of these insignificant school girls would ever 
enter his life to arouse his serious consideration and alter 
its imperious course. 

“ I want to know what you are going to do with Mark- 
ham ? ” he said, when he and Mr. White had withdrawn to 
confer alone together. 

“ I don’t know yet,” said Mr. White, uneasily. 

“ Then I will tell you. You are going to have him sent 
off that paper.” 

“ I don’t know as I’m going to do anything of the kind,” 
retorted Mr. White, his obstinacy aroused by the dicta- 
torial tone. 

“ I know ! ” said Ferrard. He did not regard Mr. 
White’s obstinacy as an opposing force of any moment. He 
went on in curt tones that fell like so many well-directed 
blows of a powerful hammer on the silence. “ You are the 
principal stockholder in that paper. You put Markham in at 
Wilson’s request, because he thought he would be a good 
man for us. You will take him out at mine, because I know 
him to be precisely the reverse. Our side is the right one ; 
you know it and I know it. The man who goes against 


124 


AS COMMON 1 MORTALS. 


it is going wrong. We know that too. If there are one or 
two side issues that do not admit of our full approval, we 
must accept them for the sake of the main object. That 
editorial last Wednesday was a direct defiance of our 
orders.” 

“ I know it. I told Markham so, and he said it would 
have been against his conscience to have written in any 
other tone.” 

“ Don’t ask him to go against his conscience. Give him 
full moral play. But it will go against my conscience, 
which is a healthier plant than his any day, to permit my 
party to be damaged by any vacillation in its instruments. 
You put him in on the Republic and I am going to take 
him off.” 

“ I own the stock,” said Mr. White defiantly. 

“ Keep it to yourself, then; and manage it,” said Ferrard, 
rising, with an unconcealed sneer. 

“ No — but, see here, Ferrard ! I don’t want to quarrel 
with you.” 

“ Fortunate for you. I shouldn’t indulge you in any 
wish of the sort.” 

“ Sit down, sit down ! Let’s talk the thing over 
amicably,” said Mr. White, urgently. “ I know Markham’s 
in the wrong. He always flies with the last bird that 
chippers at him, and those Bugle people got at him.” 

“ Of course they got at him ! I believed at first that we 
could keep him to ourselves, and I knew him to be an able 
echo of the last voice he hears, always. But I have other 
things to do than to keep up a perpetual dinning of the 
truth into his ears, you are too easy with him, and the 
others don’t count.” 

Ferrard seated himself and leaned across the narrow 
table, his large, versatile hands talking, as did his powerful 
face, so charged with conviction that words seemed super- 


A CASE OF CONSCIENCE . 


125 


fluous feathers whirled along on the strong wind of his pur- 
pose. 

“ White, was that stock of any use to you, or the paper 
of any value to the community until I put it into shape for 
you ? ” 

“ No, but—” 

“ Hear me out, and then say your say. Markham has 
been of service to us, but he has early outlived his useful- 
ness. We can’t afford to employ a gentleman whose con- 
science is subject to such extraordinary fluctuations. A 
man who tries to fight on both sides is worse than a 
declared enemy. I don’t make up my mind until I’ve 
thoroughly sifted the evidence for both parties, and decided 
with whom the balance of right remains. Then I take my 
stand, and keep it. But Markham can’t even make a con- 
sistent choice of lesser evils. He’s an injurious idiot, and 
he’s got to go.” 

“ Well, he is rather a turn-coat, and he makes us absurd 
occasionally, I think myself. But the fact is ” — Mr. White 
fidgeted with his heavy watch chain — “ I can’t help liking 
him, personally. He took me up to his house one night, a 
little place, like the one Lu and I went to housekeeping in 
when we were first married. The other little girl— the one 
that died — was born there. And I tell you, Markham’s got 
the nicest little wife you ever saw, a pretty, shy little thing 
with three babies — all girls. One of them had a trick of 
crowing for all the world like my Kitty used to. It would 
be rather hard on that little woman and those young ones to 
have him come home some night and say he’s lost his place.” 

u I’m sorry for any women and children whom a man's 
idiotic misconception of his business places in privation. 
But we can’t deal with an issue of national importance with 
an eye to all the women and children who may be indirectly 
involved in our choice of instruments. Your study of an 


1 26 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


interior is a success — as such, but I can’t consent to view 
it in the light of an argument.” 

“ Perhaps not ; but I hate to have him discharged, all the 
same.” 

“ Give him a place in your business if you are distressed 
on his account. He can’t hurt the sugar trade, whatever he 
does. And you will look out for your own interests there 
better than in politics.” 

“ I might do that,” said Mr. White, with pondering 
hopefulness. 

“ Of course you might ! Tell him his talents are too 
versatile to be pinned down by newspaper work, but that 
in the building up of a great business, intelligence, 
integrity, etc., will find their legitimate sphere. That is, if 
you like. For my part, I think the better plan would be 
to give him a sharp lesson by letting him hunt around for 
a new berth in place of the one his too-developed receptivity 
has forfeited. There’s your bell. The others are here.” 

“ Shall I lay the subject before them ? ” 

“ O, as a matter of form, yes.” 

“ Do you think Brainard will give us any trouble ?” asked 
Mr. White, nervously. 

“ No,” answered Ferrard, with a short, contemptuous 
laugh. 

•“ I didn’t like his action here last week,” said Mr. White, 
stepping to the door of the room, and listening to the voices 
below. 

“ Who did?” 

“ I thought he had some of them with him.” 

“ You’ll think differently to-night.” 

“ Say, Ferrard ; you’ll back me up about the Joyce 
matter ? ” 

An ironical smile flitted over Ferrard’s lips as he saw 
himself thus presented to view as a backer for Mr. White, 
but he held his peace, and the expected guests entered. 


CHAPTER XII. 


THE SONS OF REFORM. 



HOSE whose experience of spiritualism is comprised in 


1 a frolicsome call on a dingy seeress who causes speedy 
marriages, returns lost articles, tells color of the eyes and 
hair of future spouse, and cures all diseases, for fifty cents, 
will perhaps find an incongruity in the discovery of a woman 
of Mrs. Hyland’s passion and cleverness, a man of Dr. Bal- 
land’s cultivated plausibility among professional mediums. 
Serious consultation of Bowery sibyls and Wooster Street 
sages is possibly more frequent among people of good stand- 
ing and unblemished repute than the fastidious reader will 
be willing to admit ; nor are the public table-tipping “ mate- 
rialization ” seances unattended by believing ones of fair 
birth and breeding. By some inexplicable law of attraction, 
the purest and sweetest are often drawn with the lowest and 
meanest into the bewildering labyrinths of spiritualistic 
investigation. Oftenest those in whom a base leaven works 
its way through fine material, are found avowed disciples of 
a peculiar doctrine which among the more cultivated takes 
its tone from Asiatic thought, retaining, however, an occi- 
dental energy of belief in beneficent results of a practical 
-nature, foreign to the quietism of the Orientals. 

To Milly, a religion based on a plan cf salvation which 
included mankind only, and but a modern and fragmentary 
portion of the elected race, was necessarily deficient. She 
could never free herself from the thought of all creation 


128 


AS COMMON MORTALS . 


groaning and travailing in pain. The timid deer dying in 
the steel clutch of the tiger ; the worn-out race-horse bow- 
ing his once haughty head in the knacker’s yard ; the starv- 
ing cat prowling, stoned and despised, through city streets ; 
the frozen sparrow on the snow in the winter moonlight — 
all these humble, harmless creatures were borne in her 
heart. “ These lambs — what have they done ? ” was the tor- 
menting question, as she learned to recognize the cruel, 
inexorable necessities of nature, so unnoted in the Christian 
system, that pleasant staff for the faint souls of men. The 
spiritualized pantheism of the mongrel believers with whom 
she had lately been associated seemed to her gentler, 
broader ; yet the vigorous, direct nature could not part 
from the definite statements and assured hopes of early 
years. She was perhaps willfully unconscious of any devia- 
tion from the faith of her childhood. She still considered 
herself a believing Christian, but, happily, assisted to a larger 
interpretation of the word than had been possible to her 
formerly. The visionary hopes and fears suggested by that 
Thursday meeting in Melpomene Hall appealed powerfully 
to a nature unable, in its crude, passionate immaturity, to 
accept the inevitable negations of all sustained philosophic 
inquiry with the expectant resignation which betrays that 
gentle pessimist, the honest philosopher. Had Mrs. Hyland 
been a shade less restrained through all her dramatic action 
that night ; had Dr. Balland been given to entertaining the 
original views on grammar occasionally known to accom- 
pany originality with regard to more recondite matters 
among others of his class, the fastidious taste dormant in 
the girl would have been offended, and their influence weak- 
ened and destroyed. Miss Reese, less fine of grain than 
her young friend, less of an innate lady, despite her more 
favorable surroundings, was even more liberally inclined to 
new theories despite their social and intellectual defects, 


THE SONS OF REFORM. 


I29 


and, a blind leader of the blind, took Milly with her into 
curious by-ways for the treading of such dainty feet. 

Milly was as courageous as it is possible for an acutely 
sensitive person to be, and was only once seriously alarmed 
in the course of their wanderings, and that from physical 
causes. She and Eleanor had resolved to attend a meeting 
in New York, of which they knew little save that Dr. Bal- 
land was to preside, and that it had its reference to the 
“ cause ”. They were to spend a day and a night with a dis- 
tant relative of Miss Reese, returning to Goverick on the 
morning following. They had gone alone and unattended 
to Melpomene Hall each Sunday evening, and, though they 
were generally accompanied home by one of the mild old 
gentlemen or ambitiously courteous youths who frequented 
that place of indiscriminate worship, were not at all alarmed 
when they found themselves companionless, having little 
cause to fear either personal or social injury from their 
lonely walks. They were as ignorant as two children of the 
established resemblance of New York to a European city, 
and of the fact that simple Goverick manners and morals, 
relics of the early days of the republic, were by no means 
among the characteristics of the metropolis. Goverick peo- 
ple of the middle class did not hire hacks except on stormy 
nights or occasions of full-dress festivity, and Eleanor's 
cousin, a vague, complaisant old lady, living in a respecta- 
bly decaying quarter of the brilliant city, owned no private 
carriage. So, disregarding the mild remonstrances of Mrs. 
Tower, who had caught faint echoes of the voice of the 
times even in her hermit existence in her dim rooms, they 
set out to walk alone to the place of meeting. It was far 
over on the east side, they had been told, and the broad 
commercial respectability of Fourth, the mysteriously dete- 
riorated decency of Lexington Avenue, already lay behind 
them, as they stood on Mrs. Tower's mold-streaked front 


130 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


steps. They crossed Third Avenue, alive overhead with 
rushing trains and under foot with soiled children, and went 
on past Second, quite destitute at that point of the faded, 
imposing dignity of a dozen blocks below, where the lover 
of “ local color” may, pausing in Stuyvesant Square, delight 
himself with the British solidity and lack of up-town smart- 
ness displayed in the fine old houses. 

“ Oh, Eleanor ! ” said Milly, “ don’t you think this is a 
horrid neighborhood ? And aren’t you afraid ? ” 

“ My child ! Think of the places that city missionaries 
visit. And we must sacrifice something of our own pleasure 
in the cause of right,” said Eleanor, with an agreeable sense 
of a little painless martyrdom. 

But Milly shrank and shivered as two ill-looking fellows 
peered into their veiled faces as they passed beneath the 
light of a street lamp. They reeled on without remark, 
however, and Milly, with a throbbing heart, stopped at last 
before a dingy door in the side of a filthy, frowning building, 
“ This is the number — 480 — ” she said. “ Oh, Eleanor, it 
can’t be here !” 

“ Look and see if there is any placard of announcement,” 
said Eleanor, peering ineffectually through her glasses. 

Milly looked. A card on which something was scribbled 
in an unformed hand was tacked to the half-open door. 
Her strong young eyes caught the words in the flare of the 
distant lamp. 

“ Meeting of the Sons of Reform at 8 sharp. Addresses 
by H. Rafferty, Dr. Balland, Herr Bradt and others. All 
welcome.” 

“ It is surely here,” she said, with a rueful, tremulous 
laugh, looking timorously at the dismal gleam of dark water 
visible at the end of the street. “ Oh Eleanor ! Can’t 
Reform lodge her children in more agreeable quarters than 
these ? Do you think we had better go in ? ” 


THE SONS OF REFORM . 


I3 1 

“ Of course,” said Eleanor, undismayed. “ I’m ashamed 
of you, Milly.” She stepped within the narrow, grimy 
entry, and Milly followed, feeling like an early Christian 
entering the catacombs. No door was visible in the dimly 
lighted hall save one at the end, which plainly led out 
into a noisome, paved court. 

“ It must be up stairs,” said the intrepid Eleanor, and 
mounted the crazy slope of steps, followed by the devoted 
Milly. The latter had a very imperfect apprehension of the 
coarser dangers of existence, but she trembled with a vague 
fear as she traversed the ill-smelling upper hall which was 
just light enough for her to see the broken stair-rail, the 
dislocated board flooring, and the hideous dado on the wall, 
indicative of the groping of countless dirty hands. A voice 
raised as in addressing an audience, assured her a little as 
they paused before a door, through the chinks of which a 
stronger light gleamed, and she was glad of the quick motion 
with which Eleanor turned the unsteady knob and stepped 
within the room. A long, rather low apartment, filled with 
benches, a moderate audience, the nature of which was indis- 
tinguishable at first coming in from the darkness without, 
and Dr. Balland’s familiar face on the platform, filled her 
with a delightful sense of relief and rescue. She was bit- 
terly ashamed of her fears, and sunk into the nearest seat 
with a beseeching smile that mutely implored Eleanor’s for- 
giveness. Eleanor’s answering smile was not free from the 
triumph of “ I told you so ! ” and Milly felt that she was 
decidedly too young to indulge in the luxury of private 
judgment in the presence of her superiors. 

Her first confusion subsiding, she looked around the 
room, and a little of her recently assuaged timidity began to 
return upon her. The walls had been roughly and recently 
white-washed, the wooden benches and the platform fur- 
nishings were of the rudest order, and there was nothing in 


* 3 * 


AS COMMON 1 MORTALS . 


the room to attract attention but a series of banners ranged 
at regular intervals along the walls, Milly read the inscrip- 
tions on these banners with much disturbance. One 
demanded “ Blood or Bread ! ” Another that there should 
be “ No sweating Labor ! No sleeping Capital ! ” A third 
bore Cromwell’s famous words : “ Trust in God and keep 
your powder dry.” The next, evidently disapproving of the 
belief in a celestial monarch displayed by its too conserva- 
tive neighbor, announced that there should be “ No God 
above, No Kings below. The capitalists in hell. The 
people supreme.” 

No one could have less personal reason than Milly for an 
involuntary identification of self with these doomed cap- 
italists, but she had not inherited the Harris persuasion 
that the wealthy were removed from them by a measureless 
gulf of worldly superiority, and it was her unconscious habit 
to vow a mental alliance with any threatened person or 
class. The faces most prominent in the audience bore no 
reassurance for her rather startled spirit. The lowest types 
of Irish and German, not intellectually but morally con- 
sidered, were represented there. As she remarked the pre- 
ponderance of slanting brows, of wide-lipped, prominent 
mouths, the belligerent expression of semi-enlightened 
brutality, she felt that this group of reform’s sons did their 
parent little credit. Precisely what Dr. Balland’s message 
to these unpromising disciples could be, she found it difficult 
to imagine. She saw with some alarm that she and Eleanor 
were the only women present, excepting two or three slat- 
ternly and weary-looking creatures, accompanying their 
lords from mixed motives, probably finding their root in the 
foreboding recollection of the many liquor saloons to be 
encountered in the return walk. She was very anxious to 
have the speaker, who was addressing the sons in German, 
finish his guttural speech that she might learn Dr. Balland’s 
mission hither. 


THE SO.VS OF REFORM. 


1 33 


His turn came next, and as he advanced to the front, 
Milly was struck by an indefinable change in his bearing 
and appearance. She had heard him speak on several 
occasions since the meeting which Mr. Archer heralded, and 
had received the honor of an introduction to him and Mrs. 
Hyland, and she liked him less in his private capacity of 
amateur gentleman than in his public character of instructor 
in supernatural ethics. But now the mysterious superiority 
of the platform, the labored deference of the parlor, were 
gone. A bright red tie flamed in the place of the wonted 
black bow. His whole air was familiar, hearty, coarser ; 
yet had Milly but known it, less vulgar because more 
natural. He placed his hands on his hips in an attitude 
popularly supposed to be the native pose of the “ masses ”, 
and which in his case was intended to indicate a sympathetic 
identification of himself with the audience before him, and 
spoke : 

“Well, my brother workers, here I am. I told you I 
wouldn’t fail you, and Anthony Balland never went back on 
his promises yet ; his friends and his enemies have both got 
good reason to know that. You come under the first head, 
and I’m pretty solid with you, I guess, though you all know 
I take a different line from you in some things. But it's all 
for the good of the people. I’ve no opinion of a man who 
leaves any stone unturned when he can find something 
under it that he can use for the benefit of the cause he’s 
working for. Do you want to know how I got here to-night 
from my lodging up town on the west side ? I didn’t ride 
in my carriage. I should be afraid to face fine fellows like 
you if I stepped out of a cushioned rolling-chair, while some 
of you stumped around here in your worn-out shoes. I’d 
be afraid my coachman might be tempted to join you in 
rolling me under the horses’ feet. I haven’t got a carriage 
of my own ; never had, and never expect to have. Any 


134 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


man who owns a carriage in these days when half the world 
is wanting boots to tramp through the mud in, ought to be 
locked up inside of it and flung with it into the East River* 
We wouldn’t grudge him his cushions down among the 
other wrecks, though perhaps he’s grudged us pillows to 
our hard beds many a time. You can dream queer dreams 
without pillows though, and one of these days, when the 
dreams come true, he’ll wish he’d been food for fishes long 
ago. I didn’t hire a hack either. The people who tie up 
the money are mighty careful not to leave any chinks 
through which cab-fare for a poor devil like me might leak 
out. What’s more, I didn’t take a street car or come by the 
“ L ” road. When I’ve the wind and limb and shoe-leather 
to stand it, I keep my five cent piece and my dime from 
the bulging pockets of the monopolist. I walked. I 
walked down Fifth Avenue, too. I looked at some houses 
there, boys, that you all know pretty well — by sight. Why 
not ? A cat may look at a king. Well, one of these days 
the kings will look at the cats, and they won’t need gold 
spectacles to see how the cats have grown. Do you know 
what they think of the cats now ? They think they are 
prowling, midnight gutter-snipes, to be stoned and hooted 
at and starved, and to have cheap newspaper jokes made 
about them. And their skins are useful ; cat’s skin doesn’t 
make a bad cloak-lining to be palmed off on my lady as 
Siberian squirrel. Cats’ skins make a good rug to be laid 
down before the fire in my lord’s room. But they mistake 
the breed, these corporation kings, these American peers 
and peeresses. These hungry cats are tiger pups ! And 
tiger pups that have been starved into stratagem. Some of 
these days, when they are ready for an organized spring, 
the kings will laugh once too often ; they’ll throw one stone 
too many ; take one skin too much. Then the tigers will 
leap. Do you know what a king is in a tiger’s grasp ? He 


THE sons OF REFORM. 


135 

isn’t a king very long, that’s certain. He isn’t even a man. 
He's cat's meat." 

Dr. Balland’s pale eyes seemed to emit phosphorescent 
sparks as the final sentence came out in a sibilant whisper. 
He bore a disquieting resemblance to a great white cat. 
There was a hoarse murmur of applause, and a furious 
stamping of approving feet. A thrill of terror ran through 
Milly. Could this be the high priest of a religion with all 
‘the modern improvements ? She turned eyes of alarm and 
sorrow to Eleanor, who, for once, looked slightly discom- 
posed. So did Dr. Balland, who had in that moment caught 
sight of them. He had had no idea that these young ladies 
would have the temerity to be present at this meeting, 
which he had announced in a Goverick meeting attended by 
Eleanor and Milly, with an invitation to any one who might 
happen to be sojourning in the metropolis at the time to 
avail themselves of its privileges. He had of course dis- 
cerned in them, Miss Reese more especially, a marked value 
to the very comprehensive cause which he represented. He 
understood that here were more delicate susceptibilities 
than he usually dealt with, and he was not gratified by their 
appearance among the sons of reform. It had never sug- 
gested itself to his imagination, much better instructed than 
their own with regard to the perils to which unescorted 
ladies were exposed in this quarter of the city, that they 
would heed and respond to his general invitation. 

But he did not dare to moderate his speech, being aware 
of the importance of remaining on friendly terms with 
these dingy children of the star-eyed goddess, and he knew 
that temperance in speech or declared intention was not 
among the qualifications desired by them in their chosen 
vessels. And he was too wise a man to pull one of his 
uncertainly heated irons from the fire. 

He temporized judiciously by producing a paper and 


1 36 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


reading a list of statistics tending to set forth the oppres- 
sions practiced by manufacturers on their employees, some 
of them but too sadly substantiated by fact, others entitling 
the doctor himself to the name of manufacturer. The 
audience listened greedily, and in Milly’s mind the germ of 
a conviction that these sullen malcontents had some found- 
ation on which to rear their doomed theory of social 
reconstruction began to expand into life. She also listened 
eagerly, and was touched to see the horny hands go wil- 
lingly into ragged pockets and come out clutching hardly 
earned, freely given coin, when, at the doctor’s instance, a 
collection was taken up for the organization of a similar 
society in a far western city which he was to visit shortly. 
She noticed among these men one or two young faces, 
alive with the hope of desperation, and the old compassion- 
ate ache throbbed in her heart. 

This impersonal sympathy was dashed by a return of 
personal fear, when, after a speech, breathing blood and 
fire, from a short, dark, vindictive Irishman, the meeting 
noisily adjourned, and several coarse faces were turned 
with bold inquiry on the unmistakable ladies shrinking back 
in their seats. Dr. Balland soon reached them, however, 
expressing a thousand thanks for their courtesy, much 
admiration of their courage, and begging them to accept 
his escort to their temporary home. Milly shrunk from 
the florid courtesy of his manner less than usual, grateful 
for any protection from the lurking evils of the dreadful 
street, and they left the hall together. 

“You were not pleased, ladies,” said the doctor, as they 
stepped out into the clear starlight, shining calmly down on 
the grim squalor which surrounded them. Eleanor 
appropriated the implied question and volunteered the 
reply. “ I was deeply impressed with the truth of your 
comments on the existing state of things, and agree with 


THE SONS OF REFORM. 


137 


you that strong measures are necessary for its alteration, 
but I frankly admit that some of the speeches seemed to 
me — well, incendiary ! ” 

“ Mine included ? ” said Dr. Balland, with his half 
choked laugh. “ Is feminine intuition so unreliable as to 
fail to see that mine was a difficult part to-night? My 
sympathies are with these people, Miss Reese. I have 
identified myself with the lower classes.” 

A superficial observer of Dr. Balland’s physiognomy 
might have thought that the accident of birth had sated 
him that labor. “ You know that my hope is to make the 
name ‘ Republic * no longer a misnomer in this country. 
For and with these people I must work. But I can not 
address them with temperate words ; it would breed 
immediate distrust, weaken my influence, render me use- 
less. I hope to bring them to my point of view, but not 
yet. Should a crisis arise, I would appeal to their caution ; 
they are not ready for the reception of the truth that evolu- 
tion, not revolution, should be their watchword.” 

“ Revolution has occasionally been a process of social 
evolution,” said Eleanor, with a ready conversion, which 
longed to improve on the words of her instructor. 

“ You see that ! Ah, there has been rapid development 
here ! And the same influences which can thus gild refined 
gold and paint the lily, are aiding me to pierce to the core 
of these flesh-stifled souls that I may be able to employ a 
more direct method of treatment.” 

Eleanor’s ever-ready credulous vanity was flushing her 
cheeks with delight, when they suddenly paled with a less 
agreeable emotion. A thundering, clattering sound was 
heurd in the silent street, and in the distance appeared a 
lurid, rushing shape, its mad career accompanied by the 
shouts of hoarse voices, the desperate clanging of an angry 
bell, and bright flakes of flying fire. It awakened a tumult 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


138 

of startled echoes as it came, and if its mission was that 
of rescuing angel, its seeming was that of destroying 
demon. On it tore, whirled along by plunging horses, 
trailing shuddering drifts of vapor, dark figures balancing 
insanely upon it, the glittering sparks seeming emanations 
from the red and gold of its burnished surface. 

On the curb sat a little old woman, bent, dry, brown and 
frail as a withered leaf. The kindly winds might have tossed 
her there for a moment’s rest in her purposeless flight, but 
the fitful doze of extreme age was broken by the cries of 
the firemen, the rush and roar of the dashing wheels of the 
engine. With a faint cry she started up from her safe 
position, and, drawing her fluttering rags about her, 
tottered wildly into the street, endeavoring to cross before 
the terrible thing should reach her. A cry of warning 
burst from the foremost fireman as he saw the warped old 
figure in its hurrying folly, but no hand could check 
immediately those horses, maddened by the scent of fire 
from afar. “ One woman killed ” was the report already 
registered in his mind, when a tall young figure, long 
armed and swift, darted before his amazed eyes and his 
galloping horses, seized the shaking remnant of woman- 
hood, and threw herself, still holding the old creature, flat 
on the ground, just beyond the reach of the circling wheels. 
There had been no time to step back. 

“ Milly ! ” cried Eleanor hysterically, “ are you killed ? ” 

“ No,” said Milly, feeling suddenly devoid of knees, 
as Dr. Balland placed her on her feet. “ I’m afraid the 
old woman was hurt by the fall, though. See to her, will 
you ? ” 

But at the sight of real danger, the duller imagination 
that had not been touched by the potential terrors of their 
expedition, was hopelessly excited. With a confused notion 
that her own life and limbs had been in jeopardy, Miss 


THE SONS OF REFORM. 


39 


Reese continued to wring her hands and ask Milly if she 
still lived. 

The engine had dashed down to the end of the street, 
but two of the firemen had swung recklessly from the back 
to ascertain the result of a daring which the brave fellows 
could well appreciate. A crowd had sprung up in the 
deserted street after the mysterious fashion of crowds, and 
Dr. Balland, after ascertaining that the old woman had 
received no injury beyond that of the fright which had 
apparently carried off her last remaining fragment of intelli- 
gence, handed her over to the authorities, who pronounced 
her a vagrant, and the poor old thing was led away, believ- 
ing if she had any power of belief left, that she had been 
guilty of a capital crime in endeavoring to escape from the 
dreadful creature, which was probably her enemy, the law, 
incarnate. She recognized nothing of the real nature of 
her peril, her escape, or the action of her preserver. Not 
so Miss Reese, who gradually became calm, and who, when 
they were at last permitted to go on their homeward way, 
caressed and scolded Milly in the intervals of extravagant 
praise. 

“ Oh please don’t, dear Eleanor ! ” cried Milly. “ I feel 
like the heroine of a circulating library novel. It wasn’t 
at all an original incident. Still it would have been worse 
if the old woman had been a golden haired child, and the 
fire engine an elegant carriage drawn by a blooded team, 
which refused to be checked by the frenzied efforts of the 
pallid driver. Dr. Balland ! ” with a sudden thought, 
“ did you see her when I did ? ” 

“ I saw her,” said the doctor, solemnly, “ but my hand 
was staid. It was your opportunity to prove yourself. I 
could not rob you, and I now congratulate you.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


A CLUB RECEPTION. 

“ T TNCLE Jo wants you to go with him and Aunt Lucy 
U and Kitty to the Lenox Club reception.” 

“ How splendid ! ” cried Milly, among whose many con- 
tradictory traits was a girlish liking for social pleasures. 
“ What will I wear, mamma ? ” 

“You have but the one dress that is fit.” 

The one dress was a dark green velvet, the purchase of 
which had filled Aunt Lucy with horror, not because of its 
inappropriateness to a girl not yet eighteen, but as an 
unwarrantable expense, considering Mark’s income. But 
Mrs. Barron thought it well worth its hardly spared price 
when she saw how perfectly it set out the russet hair and 
faint bloom, as the dark eyes peeped out with young happi- 
ness from beneath the shade of the wide girlish hat. 

The Lenox Club was a very recent institution in Goverick, 
and its organization had been attended with many sighs 
and deprecations from the wives of its worthy founders. 
Club life in Goverick was as yet in its infancy, and it was 
“ borne in upon” the Goverick matrons that this new 
departure was in the direction from all goodness, and with 
prophetic eyes they mentally saw their model city rivaling 
the metropolis in wickedness ; it was already becoming 
tainted with “ Boston infidelity ” through the ministrations 
of that thinly cloaked emissary of evil, the Rev. Mr. Had- 
field, and the spiritual defalcations of the once orthodox 
Ward. 


A CLUB RECEPTION . 


141 

The excellent ladies longed for the days when a hint of 
heterodoxy was as startling and socially damaging as the 
discovery in a hitherto well-received individual, of a dis- 
position to love his neighbor’s wife as his own, or to 
relieve the same gentleman of his surplus capital. They 
would fain have revived that sober season when dancing at 
parties was considered unseemly and spiritually detrimental, 
and when the always invited “ minister ”, if betrayed into a 
house where the young people cherished a dark intention 
of devoting at least the latter part of the evening to the 
pagan rites of Terpsichore, immediately made his reproach- 
ful adieux at the sound of the unholy strains which indi- 
cated the forming of sets for the lanciers. They sighed for 
the nights when the “ lodge ” was the nearest approach to 
“ the club” that a recalcitrant and embarrassed husband 
could plead, in short, they lamented the “ good old times ”, 
which whenever they may fall, always represent the golden 
age to the middle-aged, the dark one to the rising genera- 
tion, and which to these good women meant the days 
when clubs, scientific investigation, cotillons and other 
“ foreign inventions ” were results of a rapidly corrupting 
civilization unknown in Goverick. 

But the gentlemen who were responsible for the Lenox 
Club were wise in their day and generation. It has been 
stated in an earlier page of this book that Goverick was a 
very complete embodiment of the American intention. 
A republic is founded on business principles and implies 
work. The instinct which makes many an American 
housekeeper feel guilty if she reads a novel, or otherwise 
amuses herself early in the morning, which makes her 
husband consider a social call a deplorable waste of time, 
and renders him a wretched aimless creature through the 
waking hours of our few holidays, was at work in the gen- 
tlemen to whom Goverick was indebted for the Lenox Club. 


42 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


They were too truly representative citizens of their native 
land to organize a club for purposes of social recreation 
alone. They intended, as a side issue, with an enlargement 
of the wasted benevolence of the projectors of Melpomene 
Hall, that it should be a safe place, free from matrimonial 
and other snares, in which their sons could pass an even- 
ing, but there was a strong political purpose beneath the 
ostensible variety of motives, and the club house was 
destined to become the strong-hold of a political organiza- 
tion, the roll of membership of which could have been 
used for that of the alleged social club. 

The outcome of all this was a substantial, well appointed 
and extremely hideous building, and a membership of a 
character peculiar to Goverick. Each respectable church 
in the neighborhood had apparently sent its delegates, for 
none were left unrepresented. The young men of fashion 
who joined it were for the most part amiable youngsters 
cherishing a secret respect and an avowed contempt for 
Goverick achievements. These attired themselves with 
solicitous care, and though occasionally betrayed into 
pitfalls by the exercise of private judgment in the matter 
of neckties, presented an appearance creditable to a city 
which aspired to show New York and Boston that 
it could do things correctly when it chose. Most 
trades and professions were represented in the Lenox Club, 
wholesale groceries having a fair show, retail dry goods not 
being ignored, and insurance, and banking vying with med- 
icine and the law for intellectual prominence. There is no 
doubt that the atmosphere of Goverick is favorable for the 
development of the domestic affections, and the older 
members of the club were, in most instances, excellent hus- 
bands and fathers. They therefore felt it a pleasure as well 
as a duty to send out cards for a ladies’ reception which 
should enable their wives and daughters to view the splen- 


A CLUB RECEPTION. 


M3 


dors of the house, and tend at the same time to the widen- 
ing of their social opportunities. Mr. White and Mr. Bar- 
ron were both members of the club, the former a very active 
one, and his kindly heart moved him to pity Mary and 
Milly because Mark’s absence from home would debar them 
from the enjoyment of this rare privilege, and prompted 
him to invite them to accompany his party. Mrs. White 
was pleased at the thought of having her sister with her, 
but objected to Milly as likely — from superior size, merely, 
— to overshadow Kitty. The mixed pleasure therefore 
resolved itself into unmixed displeasure when she found that 
Mrs. Barron did not care to go without her husband, but 
had eagerly accepted the invitation for Milly. 

“ You have no discretion, Josiah,” she said, with a most 
unwonted show of irritation. 

“ Why, what do you mean ? ” asked Mr. White, loud, 
good humored, uncomprehending. Mrs. White did not 
care to explain the finer shades of her meaning to her direct, 
simple-minded lord, so she merely remarked, “ I do not see 
how you can look out for Kitty as you ought, when you 
have three ladies to take care of.” 

“ Oh, the girls will be all right ! They can take care of 
each other, and that will give me a better chance to devote 
myself to you,” said Mr. White, affectionately. 

Mrs. White was so far softened that she made no further 
discouraging comment on his too comprehensive generosity, 
but she secretly resolved that Kitty should have a red vel- 
vet gown to balance Milly’s unwarranted green one. 

Yet when the two young creatures stood side by side 
Kitty’s mother was dissatisfied, though she would not have 
owned it to herself, and inwardly insisted on the superior 
refinement of her tiny daughter’s appearance. What is it 
that constitutes the indefinable something which is to a 
woman’s outward seeming — to use a trite because unequaled 


144 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


simile — what the bloom is to the grape, the down to the 
peach ? It is not elegance, for some elegant women lack it; 
it is not style, for style has its hard and loud yet undeniable 
varieties. It is a look which school girls in their innocent 
slang describe as “ so swell which makes the most unlikely 
garments look surprisingly right when worn by its fortunate 
possessors ; which may or may not be accompanied by per- 
fection of appointment in dress ; an indescribable air of 
unquestionable distinction which may be among the long 
descended graces of an English peeress, or the mysterious 
birth-right of the daughter of an American grocer. Milly 
could count this among her gifts. Kitty’s little figure was 
more shapely in its neat maturity, her gown was of richer 
velvet, her lace of finer texture than Milly’s. But Milly 
would never have permitted herself to be draped in the 
magenta tainted red, and even had the choicer color clad 
Kitty, she would still have looked like a good and pretty 
plebeian. The homely surroundings of her father’s early 
life showed in her dress and bearing, softened and refined 
by the educating influence of a truly sweet and gracious 
nature. The happy knack of saying the right and pleasant 
things came from the trustworthy prompting of an unspoiled 
spirit, and did not extend to discrimination in choosing her 
garments, and on all occasions demanding unusual splendor, 
dear little Kitty looked like the sweetest of housemaids out 
on a holiday. 

But Mr. White saw only the perfection of young charm 
in his gentle, dowdy little daughter, and he looked at her 
with much pride. 

“ Well, little girl, I guess you’ll match the best of them 
to-night ! Milly, you look first rate too.” 

As they entered the first of the club parlors and made 
their bows to the ladies who were “ receiving ” the guests, 
they gained a general and pervading impression of smilax, 


A CLUB RECEPTION. 


MS 

A lavish hand had trimmed the chandeliers, wreathed the 
picture frames, looped the curtains with this useful vine, 
starred here and there with carnation pinks of red and 
white, much art having been used in the concealment of the 
little sticks to which these stiff blossoms had been wired. 
i' An occasional frock coat broke the monotony of male 
^evening dress, and gave evidence of a few minds still 
■ retaining their republican simplicity. The ladies looked 
lovely — of course, and indeed it is a fact worthy of com- 
ment that as the wealth and resources of the country increase, 
the oft quoted fragility of American women decreases, and 
that as these conscientious daughters of the Puritans are 
better fed and less rigorously employed, they lose the anx- 
ious and lean look of other days and become buxom and 
comfortable in appearance. 

The faces of the members vainly sought to mask the 
radiance of gratified ambition, and that of Mr. White in 
particular soon beamed with delighted affability as he found 
himself addressed by a large individual with a round solemn 
face, from whose pendulous chin sprouted a tuft of wiry 
dark hair. 

“ Well, White,” said this worthy, familiarly, “ this looks 
like a big success.” 

“ Well, it does,” assented Mr. White. “ A fine looking 
company, Mr. Bulley.” 

“Ah, but wait until you see the supper tables,” said Mr. 
Bulley, with a wink of great intimacy. 

“ Good ? ” 

“ Good ! I should think so. I’m chairman of the refresh- 
ment committee, you know, and that supper — ” Mr. Bulley 
narrowed his small black eyes, and laid one fat fore-finger 
with a little splashing noise of meeting flesh against the 
puffy palm of the other hand — “ that supper is going to 
cost the club a cool thousand ! ” 


146 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Guy ! ” exclaimed Mr. White delightedly. 

“ We are not going to scrimp this time, I can tell you,” 
proceeded Mr. Bulley. “ We ain’t going to have the ladies 
but once a year, and they shall have the best that we can 
give ’em.” 

“ Well, they ought,” said Mr. White sympathetically, 
thinking of his freely donated fifty dollars with pleasure. 

“ Guess you’re about right. My wife and the girls are 
here, and my boy Ned is taking care of ’em, he’s a member, 
you know. Ned’s a great fellow, fond of the girls, like his 
father before him. I told him I knew he’d a deal rather be 
taking care of some other fellow’s sister to-night, but he’d 
got to look out for his own. I shall be too busy to do 
much for ’em. He’s a good natured chap, and all he said 
was, 1 All right, pop ; don’t ask where I’m going next Sun- 
day evening and we’ll call it square.’ But I know without 
asking, the young rascal ! George ! These young people 
make us feel old, don’t they ? But that supper, White,” 
said Mr. Bulley, returning to the original charge with 
increased enthusiasm, “ I tell you what, it isn’t just ice- 
cream, and cake, and mottoes, and a basin of lemonade in 
the hall. No church festival fare about this affair. We’ve 
got oysters, of course, in every style, and salads, chicken, 
lobster, the whole thing, and plenty of your fancy pyramids, 
pastry, jellies, custards, cream, ices, and all the rest of it, 
and-r-” Mr. Bulley lowered his voice confidentially — “ game! 
I don’t believe your New York and Boston clubs can go 
much ahead of that.” 

“No, I guess not,” said Mr. White, impressed with the 
skill of the club caterer and the sophistication of the 
refreshment committee, and hoping that the club members 
would not fail to note and be impressed by the long and 
confidential conversation he was holding with a club director. 
For Mr. White was not without his social ambitions, and 


A CLUB RECEPTION \ 


147 


Mr. Bulley was a great man in the Lenox Club in particu- 
lar and in Goverick in general. He had amassed, through 
skillful handling of wholesale groceries, a fortune at which 
Goverick wondered, and before which Goverick bowed, and 
he was warmly received in such circles as the eccentric 
orbit of his social revolutions touched. He was a simple- 
minded, vulgar, and rather parsimonious man, but, like most 
parsimonious people, was subject to fits of liberality. The 
question of a fine supper for the club reception had appealed 
to his more lavish instincts, and he rightly considered him- 
self as largely instrumental in bringing about the unques- 
tionable success. 

He was far less of a man and a gentleman than Mr. 
White, yet, with innocent vulgarity, the latter prided him- 
self on the notice of one of Goverick’s few millionaires. 

Mr. White bore one point of resemblance to the famous 
men of letters of whom he had an unfamiliar cognizance, he 
prided himself on that in which he did not excel. He was 
too truly good of heart to be aware of the amazing kindli- 
ness of his disposition, too naturally honest to recognize 
the rare quality of his absolute integrity. He believed his 
strength to lie in his powers of discernment and judgment ; 
he felt himself a judicial person rather than a benevolent 
one. He almost undervalued his remarkable commercial 
shrewdness, but he flattered himself on his comprehension 
of intricate characters, and the cool mastery with which he 
handled difficult subjects. He governed his daughter, with 
whom submission was a natural choice, his clerks, who were 
acute enough to see that he regarded business ability in 
subordinates as of less value than military obedience, his 
unprosperous younger brothers, who regarded him as an 
oracular Croesus, and those among his acquaintances who 
were of the type that luxuriates in being taken off its own 
hands and directed with imperious benevolence. But he 


148 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


was wax in the hands of the thin little woman whom he had 
married, and those who understood him swayed him at will. 
There may be those who will sneer at his honest gratification 
in the notice of the rich grocer, but it seems to me a touch- 
ing and not unlovable trait in good Mr. White. He had 
been a very poor boy, living in one of the shabbiest streets 
of a shabby town, running the errands and sweeping the 
offices of a petty firm, seeing around him on every side the 
evidences of hopeless, unaspiring poverty. By the tradi- 
tional perseverance and energy of the successful American, 
he had raised himself to the position first of clerk, then 
partner in the firm, then, while still a mere boy, he had sold 
out his little share and chosen Goverick as the theater for 
his actions. Now he was accounted a wealthy man in one 
of the largest cities in the United States. Think what 
riches symbolize to such a man ! All the contrast between 
the sordid surroundings of his early life and the opulent 
comfort of his later years rose up before him as he inspected 
the ledgers which he had good reason to find very pleasant 
reading. He saw himself, a busy, hungry, ill-paid little lad, 
and a fatherly pity for the forlorn young self of that unfor- 
gotten time would cloud his keen eyes with tears. And now 
he could hold up his head with the best in the land, and his 
wife and daughter were sweet ladies. And money had done 
it all, money earned by his own hands, clean, thank God ! 
through it all. I vow that tears, not sneers, distort my face 
as I think of the hard-working, soft-hearted man, looking 
wistfully up at the small nabob who has accumulated so 
many more dollars than have been amassed by his own 
strenuous exertions. 

His attitude toward Ferrard was very different. Ferrard 
was poor, and though Mr. White recognized to a certain 
degree the power possessed by the young man, he was only 
dimly, never admittedly, conscious of his superiority. He 


A CLUB RECEPTION. 


149 


felt himself to be Ferrard’s patron, the wise, experienced, 
well-to-do man advising the ambitious youngster. The ten- 
derness in his heart toward all struggling young fellows went 
out to Ferrard ; he longed to lend him money, to help him in 
any way and on any pretext, and he believed himself able 
to render yet more valuable aid by stretching out a restrain- 
ing hand to retard or change the impetuous course of the 
brilliant but erratic youth. He administered to him little 
doses of advice about the regulation of his expenses, and 
imagined that he bore with the nature which he dared not 
oppose, with the gentleness of one consciously basking in the 
smiles of fate, to a less fortunate individual. He often told 
his wife of the improvement he noticed in Ferrard under 
his admonitions, and when the latter was more than usually 
overbearing, remarked that the poor fellow had been greatly 
tried lately, and was getting irritable, though any thing 
more unlike that captious sickness of the spirit which we 
term irritability than Ferrard’s cool, massive determination 
it would be difficult to imagine. 

And Ferrard saw and noted, as a young lion might see 
and note the clumsy but friendly advances of a well-dis- 
posed ox, unfamiliar with the disposition of lions, and for- 
bore to spring as yet, for oxen may serve at a pinch and in 
time of need to provide food for hungry lions. 

Ferrard was approaching now with Haslett to the spot 
where Mr. White stood, still listening to the gastronomic 
discourse of Mr. Bulley. 

“ Ah, Ferrard ! ” Mr. White’s tone was full of cordial 
patronage. “You know Mr. Bulley. Mr. Haslett, we’ve 
met before, I believe. Mr. Bulley, Mr. Haslett. My wife 
and daughter, Mr. Haslett ; my niece, Milly Barron.” 

Ferrard nodded to Mr. Bulley, and bowed gravely to the 
ladies ; Haslett, copying the nod to the millionaire, bent 
low before the group of shy women. His eyes met Milly’s 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


*S° 

full as he acknowledged the introduction, and the peculiar 
vivid radiance of his glance and aspect startled the charm- 
ing, awkward girl. She did not inwardly exclaim “ What a 
beautiful man ! ’’ as she had done on meeting Ferrard, but 
she was conscious of a delightful disturbance. 

“ Your face is familiar to me, Miss Barron," said Haslett, 
addressing her in his high, melodious voice. “ 1 have seen 
you frequently with my friend Miss Reese." 

“ I know Miss Reese knows you," said Milly, shyly. 
“ You live near her, do you not ? " 

“ Yes ; within half a block of her house. Are you a 
member of the congregation which meets in Melpomene 
Hall ? " 

“ No," answered Milly, rather sorrowfully. “ Papa and 
mamma won’t let me join, and I suppose I could not any way, 
as I am still a member of the Wentworth Street Presby- 
terian Church. But I wish I might, though it would hurt 
me very much to sever my connection with the dear old 
church." 

“ May I continue to exercise the known prerogative of 
citizens of our native land and ask you if you met Miss 
Reese there ? ” 

“ Oh, no ! I mean— you may ask, certainly, but I did 
not meet her there. She took me. I met her at Aunt 
Sarah’s — Mrs. Elkins’s house." 

“ Miss Reese is not here to-night," said Haslett, half 
smiling. 

“ I’m afraid she wouldn’t enjoy it,” said Milly, smiling 
outright. “ And I don’t believe she knows that such a 
thing as a club of this sort exists in Goverick." 

“ Are you enjoying it ? " 

“ Oh, ever so much ! It promises to be delightful," 
replied Milly, eagerly. 

Haslett was rather pleased. Unlike most unenthusiastic 


A CLUB RECEPTION \ 


* 5 * 

people he liked fervor in others, and though the aesthetic 
movement had not at that time penetrated into Goverick, 
rendering its leading young ladies limp and lank, there 
were few among them who possessed the faculty for at once 
experiencing pleasure and exhibiting it with which Milly 
was dowered. 

“ Have you been around the rooms yet ? ” he asked. 

“ No, we have only just come in. Uncle stopped to 
speak to Mr. Bulley.” 

“ Perhaps Mrs. White will permit me to take you on a 
tour of inspection,” said Haslett, noticing with amusement 
the flush of delight on the transparent face. 

Aunt Lucy gave the desired permission with some mysti- 
fication at being appealed to in the matter, and more indig- 
nation that Milly and not Kitty should be the recipient of 
the first “ attention ” of the evening. But Kitty was never 
forward, like Milly, she reflected, bitterly. 

It was rather a longer tour of inspection than Haslett 
would have ventured on with a more experienced girl, or 
one in the charge of a better instructed chaperon. This 
reception, to which he had accompanied Ferrard, was a 
great bore. The few men with whom he had cared to talk 
had suddenly lost all their value, a calamity not infre- 
quently befalling gentlemen in the presence of their wives, 
their political and commercial ability suddenly becoming 
eclipsed by a sort of sheepish sociability which rendered 
them rather disgusting to Haslett. The ladies present were 
in no discovered instance attractive, and this naive, large 
child would serve as a diversion until Ferrard, who had 
managed to capture for important conversation an import- 
ant and unfettered man, should signify his readiness to leave 
the festal scene. 

After he had shown Milly the dining, card and reading 
rooms, he discovered a smilax draped alcove containing a 


* 5 * 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Ute-d-tdte sofa, and immediately took possession of it. Milly 
was very happy ; Haslett’s face was a feast for her beauty- 
loving eyes, and his gentle cynical comments on the enter- 
tainment seemed to her like the utterances, of her beloved 
Pendennis. It was so like a book to be sitting here in this 
embowered alcove, with a man who was undoubtedly as 
handsome as Alcibiades and as wise as Socrates, looking at 
her with admiration. Milly was very sorry for humanity, 
but only two of the race can be accommodated at the same 
time on a tete-d-tdte sofa, and for the moment she lost all 
sense of identification with a sinning, suffering world. All 
the young blood in her healthy veins stirred to justify the 
reaction from her customary mental habit of melancholy 
earnestness. Why should not she now and then be blissful 
and exempt like other girls. There could be no harm done 
to mankind collectively or individually by abandoning her- 
self unreservedly to the pleasant influences of the moment, 
she hoped. For in Milly the serious, ascetic temperament 
of Puritan ancestors warred constantly with the artistic 
nature, half spiritual, half sensuous, of the born poet. 

Why should she not enjoy her few pleasures unquestion- 
ingly, like those around her. She would for this once. And 
she did so love music and flowers and a great deal of light. 
As they sat there, a tall, hooked-nosed woman in a bright 
blue silk dress and white bonnet glittering with innumer- 
able crystal beads, passed them, leaning on the arm of a fat 
sleepy looking young man. 

“ Fie, Mr. Haslett ! exclaimed this lady, dealing him a 
coquettish blow with her feather fan. “Naughty! Must, 
you always be flirting in some corner or another ?” 

That made it complete. This was clearly the spiteful 
dowager of society novels, Milly thought, and it was 
delightful to have this exquisite being accused of flirting 
with her. The budding philanthropist was temporarily 


A CLUB RECEPTION. 


153 


submerged in the happy young girl. When Haslett went 
to fetch her some oysters she leaned back in a rapture of 
content. Was it not an honor to be served by so exceptional 
a man ? When Aunt Lucy passed her alcove with Kitty and 
Uncle Jo, she trembled lest she should be discovered and 
compelled to join them. She heaved a sigh of immense 
relief when they passed her, unperceiving, and she wel- 
comed Haslett on his return from the oyster hunt with the 
innocent flattery of a happy smile. 

She did not eat the dainties he brought her, but trifled 
excitedly with her fork as she told him about home, and 
papa, and mamma, and chattered about her enthusiastic 
liking for Thackeray, and Mrs. Browning and Herbert 
Spencer. Haslett smiled at the oddly assorted trio, and, 
passing over the novelist and poet, asked, “ Who intro- 
duced you to Herbert Spencer ? ” 

“ Oh, Eleanor ! We are reading him together, systemat- 
ically. It is one of the many things I have to thank her 
for.” 

“ And you care for him ? ” 

“ Yes indeed ! ” The dark eyes widened, reproachfully. 
“ Don’t you ? ” 

“ Very much, but I am several years older than you.” 

“ I hate insistence on my age and sex in intellectual mat- 
ters,” said Milly, all the childish pleasure sobering into 
shadow on her face. 

“ I do not quite see how anyone can form a fair estimate 
of another without considering age and sex,” said Haslett, 
amused. 

“ There should be no sex distinctions in literature or 
politics,” said Miss Milly, decisively. 

“ Who told you so ? ” asked Haslett softly. 

“ I think I must go to Aunt Lucy, Mr. Haslett,” said 
Milly, a flush of resentment improving her appearance. 


i54 


A S COMMON M OR TA L S. 


“ Please do not think so quite yet. And I hope I have 
not offended you by my question. You seem rather sur- 
prisingly young to have arrived at such advanced conclu- 
sions on your own account.” 

.“Iam nearly eighteen,” said Milly, with dignity. “ And 
papa and mamma and every one, except Eleanor and some 
of her friends, seem to forget it. I did not think you would 
be like the rest.” 

“ Ah, how refreshing it is to find some one who makes 
of me a mental exception,” said Haslett, with a very sweet 
look of kindly raillery in his blue eyes. “ I promise not to 
be like the rest under any circumstances, Miss Barron, since 
you evidently have good reasons for disapproving of that 
large majority. But how will you know that I am main- 
taining my difficult difference ? ” 

“ I suppose I might hear of you through Mr. Ferrard,” 
said Milly demurely. “ He is often at my uncle’s house.” 

“ And I have been there also. It is very humiliating to 
have to confess it, but you met me there once, and have 
evidently forgotten all about it.” 

“ I remember that Uncle Joe introduced me to a group of 
gentlemen one night,” said Milly, blushing, “ but I was 
vexed with him for doing so, and I never raised my eyes, 
or did any thing but get out of the room as soon as I 
could.” 

“ He repeated his error to-night— fortunately for me. 
And how was it that you were not angry with him this 
time ? ” 

“ Oh, you weren’t a whole group of politicians ! And it 
was different from being called into a room before so many 
strange gentlemen.” 

“ I am afraid you do not count Mr. White among your 
favorites.” 

“ Oh, yes I do ! ” said Milly, with compunction. “ But 


A CLUB RECEPTION. 


155 

he does odd things sometimes, and he is given to teasing 
me.” 

“ Perhaps if I were to see you in your own home,” said 
Haslett gently, “ I might make a better impression on you 
than I did at your uncle’s house.” 

“ Oh, you must know that was because I did not see you,” 
said Milly, ingenuously. “ And will you really come and 
see me ? I should like so much to have you.” 

“ Will your mother permit me to call upon her ? ” 

“ Certainly,” said Milly, much impressed by this ceremo- 
nious elegance. “ We live in Harbach Street — number four.’’ 

“ Rodney ! ” Ferrard’s voice broke in upon them. 
“ Where have you been hiding ? I have searched the rooms 
for you.” 

“ I found refuge here a little while ago, and I’ve been 
inflicting myself on Miss Barron for the last hour or 
more,” said Haslett, looking up brightly. 

“ I should not venture to intrude on your felicity, even 
for the sake of relieving Miss Barron, only that Richard 
Herndon is anxious to speak with you on a matter of 
importance, and is waiting in the billiard-room until I bring 
him tidings of you. Will you deliver them in person, and 
shall I take charge of Miss Barron while you are absent on 
the desired consultation ? ” 

“ Oh, there is Aunt Lucy ! ” exclaimed Milly, the sight 
of her aunt’s familiar gown giving rise to a very differ- 
ent emotion from that awakened by its last appearance. 
“ I will join her now, and I will not trouble Mr. Ferrard.” 

She was thankful for Aunt Lucy’s curt word of welcome, 
for she dreaded being left alone with Ferrard, from whom 
she shrunk, notwithstanding her admiration for him, not 
with any sense of repulsion, but with the instinct which 
makes a child avoid an unfriendly person. No one could 
be more innocent of guilty secrets than Milly, but the cool 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


I5 6 

scrutiny of Ferrard’s glance made her suddenly feel that he 
must know something greatly to her disadvantage, and she 
turned away with a positive sense of concealing discredit- 
able facts in her personal history. 

“ That little Barron girl is actually charming,” said Has- 
lett, as he and Ferrard left the heated rooms together an 
hour later. 

“ Don’t be a fool, Rod,” was the curt reply. 

“ Don’t be fulsome, Paul,” retorted Haslett languidly. 
•* But seriously, she is as fresh as a daisy, and has very good 
mental parts.” 

“ You are always talking and thinking about some woman, 
Haslett, though I don’t believe you were ever really in love 
in your life. And I’m tired of hearing ‘ Ladies change ! ' ” 

“I can’t return the compliment, Ferrard.” 

“ No,” Ferrard laughed shortly. 

“ History gives one the warrant for according to the 
ladies a due prominence in human affairs.” 

“ The precedent, you mean ; a different matter.” 

“ Some woman will avenge her sex and make you pay 
dearly for this unnatural indifference, old man.” 

“ When she does, may I be there to see ! ” 

“ You’ll be there, but you won’t see. It's one of the catas- 
trophes not witnessed by the victims. 

“You ought to know, Haslett.. You've given more time 
and attention to the mysteries of the tender passion than 
I’ve ever been able to spare. You certainly surpass me in 
the lighter branches and more elegant accomplishments.” 

“ That is why I so often recommend you to utilize me as 
an example — or a warning.” 

“You are incomplete in either character,” said Ferrard, 
looking with great gentleness, for him, at the brilliant face. 

“ Oh, abuse me as much as you like, Paul. I don’t get 
any praise that is worth half as much to me,” 


CHAPTER XIV. 


AN EVENING CALL. 

I T was not many evenings before Haslett, laughing a lit- 
tle gently at himself, walked up the modest steps before 
Mr. Barron’s door and sent in his cards to the two ladies. 
The neat maid ushered him into a rather dark parlor, hastily 
stepped up on a chair to light two burners of the chandelier, 
and withdrew. Haslett’s was in some degree the literary 
temperament, and he noticed with its relentless quickness of 
observation that she transferred his two cards, which she 
had received in her hand, with a sudden recollection to a 
small blue china salver, and carried them upstairs in state. 
Milly, blushing and radiant, soon appeared, with an unmis- 
takable look in her toilet of hurried adjustment. 

“ Mamma will be down in a few minutes,” she said. “ I 
am so glad to see you, Mr. Haslett.” 

“ You see that I have taken early advantage of your kind 
willingness to receive me here.” 

“ Oh, do you think so ? ” cried Milly, artlessly. “ It is 
nearly a week, six days, since the Lenox Club reception.” 

“ You have an excellent memory.” 

“ Only for things that interest me. I am shamefully for- 
getful sometimes when it is a matter of duty to remember.” 

Mrs. Barron entered with a confused but graceful little 
bow, and Milly very prettily presented Haslett. 

“ Milly tells me you spent a very pleasant evening at the 
Lenox Club reception the other night,” said Mrs. Barron, 
with a little, formal effort toward polite conversation. 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


158 

“ Mamma,” said Milly, distressed ; “ I did not say that 
of Mr. Haslett, but of myself, and the guests generally.” 

“ I am glad to know that Miss Barron found something 
to enjoy in the evening,” said Haslett. “ There is no room 
for doubt in my case.” 

“ Goverick is growing quite gay,” said Mrs. Barron, tak- 
ing refuge in glittering generalities. 

“ Yes,” said Haslett, in dutiful assent, and looking at 
Mrs. Barron with the expression of radiant admiration 
which he accorded to every woman with whom he exchanged 
a word. 

“ Milly says you know Miss Reese,” said Mrs. Barron, 
encouraged by the indulgence of his smile to return to 
personalities. 

“ I am flattered that Miss Barron should remember the 
fact. I have known Miss Reese for many years, but I have 
seen very little of her lately. I have been abroad for more 
than a year, and have been much occupied since my return 
to America, three months ago.” 

“ I’m afraid you won’t find Goverick very attractive after 
Europe,” said Mrs. Barron, suggestively. 

“ Not architecturally, certainly. But one’s home is never 
devoid of attraction.” 

“ They say New York is getting quite like a foreign city,” 
ventured the gentle lady, as a tribute to the land of her 
birth. 

“ I never could see that New York was like any thing 
but itself. But the adoption of foreign manners and cus- 
toms increases with the foreign population here, and the 
facilitation of our communication with other countries. 
People are bound to do and say and believe the same things 
under similar social conditions in every quarter of the 
globe. Civilized society is a nation in itself.” 

“Well, in some things I hope New York will keep Ameri- 


AN E VENING CALL. 


*59 


can,” said Mrs. Barron, seeing that this charming person 
considered her capable of intelligent conversation. “ The 
American Sundays, for instance ; I do hope they will never 
be destroyed by foreign ideas. And they say London is 
almost as bad as Paris now, though I don’t see how that 
can be ; the English people seem so much more like us, 
speaking the same language and all. And of course we 
are descended from them, most of us,” with a quick remem- 
brance of her city’s Irish mayor, German postmaster, and 
the polymorphous nationality of its officials in general. 
“ We have a friend, the most charming woman, you ought 
to meet her, Mr. Haslett — very intelligent, and such a lovely 
Christian, who spent five weeks in Paris last spring. She 
says it made her sick at heart to see the streets on Sunday. 
It was just like any other day, and the crowds of pleasure- 
seekers were something appalling.” 

“ America still retains many of her Puritan customs,” said 
Haslett, seeing himself appealed to, and replying with pol- 
itic indefiniteness. 

“ Yes, indeed. And I’m sure I hope she always will. 
My dear father — he died before Milly was born ; how I 
wish he could have seen her just once — used to say that 
what the American patriots fought and died for in theRev- 
olution, wasn’t that the country they had ransomed with 
their blood should become as corrupt as the one they had 
freed themselves from. Father was very patriotic, and to 
his dying day he thought more of the Fourth of July than 
all the other holidays put together, except Christmas, of 
course, and we must all put that first,” concluded Mrs. Bar- 
ron, with a sweet and sober smile. 

“ Can’t you tell us something about Europe, Mr. Has- 
let! ? ” pleaded untraveled Milly. “ I’m so hungry to hear 
about it.” 

“ I should think you were rather in danger of suffering 


1 60 AS COMMON MOR TA L S . 

from a surfeit of your friends’ experiences,” said Haslett. 
** That is the more common complaint.” 

“ Oh, there are experiences and experiences. Some of 
the girls who went to school with me have been, but their 
point of view was so different from mine that I did not feel 
that I could get much from them. And though mamma’s 
friend, Mrs. Balsam, is very sweet and nice, she could not 
tell me half the things I want to know.” 

Mrs. Barron rose. “ I will say good evening, Mr. Has- 
lett,” she said, with her quick little bow. Haslett rose also, 
not quite sure as to his obligation to regard this in the light 
of a dismissal. 

“ I know,” proceeded the little lady, “ that Milly will not 
let you off if you once begin talking Europe to her, and I 
have something to do for papa. Good evening, Mr. Has- 
lett, we shall always be glad to see you at any time.” 

Mrs. Barron tripped lightly up the stairs, happy in the 
inward assurance of having acquitted herself with propriety 
if not elegance, and Haslett seated himself for an unre- 
strained tete-a-tete with Milly, who was apparently quite 
unembarrassed by this proceeding. 

“ Please begin,” she said, with a gay smile. 

“ If you will permit me to say so, I should greatly prefer 
to make my remarks strictly local this evening,” said Has- 
lett. “ Europe can wait. It has waited very comfortably 
for centuries for my approval and your indorsement of my 
favorable opinion, and I wish to confine myself to person- 
alities on this occasion.” 

“ I think I shall like that better,” said Milly, frankly. “ I 
like to talk about myself, because it is a subject with 
which I am more or less familiar, and I like to hear 
other people talk about themselves, because they are so 
sure to be interested in the matter that they can’t fail to be 
interesting. 


AN EVENING CALL . 


161 

Haslett was honestly puzzled by the odd mixture of social 
simplicity and mental shrewdness in the clever child, but 
was too shrewd himself not to perceive that it was entirely 
genuine. 

“Tell me why you like Thackeray ? ” he said with soft 
abruptness. “ It is a rather unusual taste in any woman, 
especially in one so young.” 

“ I think it is because he has such a gentle heart.” said 
Milly. “ And I am very sure that some day I shall love 
and appreciate him better than I do now.” 

“To love by anticipation is a development of the affec- 
tions with which I am not familiar.” 

“ I do not express myself well,” said Milly, coloring, “ I 
love him now, but my life has been such a narrow one that 
I can not decide for myself if his books are as true to nature 
as the judgment of the world pronounces them.” 

“ Pardon me, you express yourself very well.” 

“ I know just enough to know that I am thoroughly unfa- 
miliar with the types he presents,” continued Milly. “ I 
think no man can understand just what a woman’s life is 
like ” — she saw a quizzical gleam in Haslett’s eye, but went 
bravely on, “ in a city and circle like mine. We know there 
is something different, but we only recognize it in inter- 
mittant flashes. We see nothing — except in very occasional 
instances — of the extremes of poverty or wealth, of good- 
ness or badness. We read of a wide social life, and it is as 
foreign to us as if it were written for the inhabitants of 
another planet. I tell you truly that I find ‘ First Princi- 
ples ’ far less difficult to understand than some parts of 
‘ Vanity Fair.’ The world of pure thought is open to all. 
But with regard to fiction — the reason why we read so much 
ephemeral literature of a local character, is because litera- 
ture in its enduring forms deals for the most part with 
things that we don’t know any thing about.” 


162 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Haslett listened with grave attention to the immature little 
speech. 

“ I can tell you of one ” he said when she stopped, rather 
breathless, “ who describes life under as prosaic conditions 
as you can possibly find in Goverick, and has made towns 
yet more sleepy and sordid immortal. One who brings to 
her work an intellect far more profound than ever Thack- 
eray owned, a touch far finer than Dickens could give ; a 
knowledge of human nature which only Balzac has equaled 
and Shakspeare surpassed.” 

“ Ah, I know,” said Milly, “ I have only read one of 
George Eliot’s books and it made me so wretched that I 
have never had the courage to open another.” 

“ What was it ? ” 

“ The Mill on the Floss.” 

“ What made you so wretched in reading it, the final ' 
catastrophe ? ” 

“ No ; that was the only way out of it for all of them. 
But I can not put it in words ; it came so cruelly close.” 

“You’ll get hardened to that in time.” 

“ Oh, I hope not,” cried Milly, shrinking. 

“ Oh, I know it,” said Haslett, smiling. 

“ I’ll forgive you for saying so, Mr. Haslett in considera- 
tion of the patience with which you have listened to the 
expression of my small opinions.” 

“ You have treated me with unmerited kindness in giving 
me an inkling of them. Besides, its quite the correct thing. 
Did you ever read a modern society novel that did not 
introduce a discussion between the hero and heroine about 
their favorite authors ? Only I believe they incline to the 
poets, and settle the merits of Mr. Tennyson and Mr. 
Longfellow in a manner that leads us to believe in the bit- 
terness of fame. She recites ‘ Come into the garden, 
Maud,’ and asks him if he ever heard it set to music, and 


AN EVENING CALL. 


1 63 


he replies never, until he heard her deliver it. And she 
blushes and feels that Tennyson has not lived in vain. And 
then he tries his hand at it, and stumbles through ‘ Break, 
break, break,' but manages to throw a good deal of pathos 
into the tender grace of the day that is dead. I remember 
a period in my own experience, when I couldn’t get through 
an evening at all without that dead day, and on my honor 
I hadn’t a thing to regret then but letting my room-mate 
get ahead of me in the last sweet thing in cravats. But 
tell me more of your impressions of George Eliot.” 

“ Well, you know there are some things we never admit, 
even to ourselves, and she seems to leave nothing unex- 
pressed in her consciousness. Oh, I wish I could say it as 
I mean it. There is something so pitiless in the way she 
throws the white light of her genius on all the little dark 
corners in people’s hearts, yet her touch is the tenderest in 
the world. She forgives every thing and every body, but 
she knows perfectly well that there is a great deal to for- 
give. Other people would never see the faults she pardons.” 

“ If the ‘ Mill on the Floss ’ taught you all that, I venture 
to predict that ‘ Middlemarch ’ will be your gospel one of 
these days.” 

“ I think it very likely,” said Milly, soberly. 

“ But Thackeray is even more famous for his skill in 
spying out human frailties,” said Haslett, bent on drawing 
out still further this unequal young person. 

“ I don’t think it takes a microscope to discover the faults, 
he sees,” said Milly. “ Cheating at cards, drinking too 
much, falling in love in the wrong place, trying to gain the 
good will of rich old men and the notice of great people. 
He tells us of motives in his own incomparable manners, 
but he does not dig down to their far-reaching roots like 
that tender, terrible woman. But I didn’t mean to talk so 
much,” she concluded with a blush. 


164 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ I am very glad you surpassed your intentions. And I 
think I agree with you about Thackeray. He has certainly 
the gentle heart that sneers kindly at the people for whose 
sake it is breaking.” 

“ I think that is why I love him, in spite of being unable 
to appreciate him ; he is so sorry for people.” 

“ What do you know about being sorry for people,” asked 
Haslett, gently. “ At seventeen, one is only glad for one’s 
self.” 

“ I don’t think I have ever been that for long together 
in my life,” said Milly. “ There was always something or 
some one unhappy about me, and it made part of my con- 
sciousness and spoiled my pleasure. There are so many 
creatures that I long to help, and can’t. 

Back, back to the early days when he and Ferrard had 
traversed the shady streets of their college town together, 
the very early days, before personal ambition, longer dor- 
mant in him than in his more intense friend, had awakened, 
went Haslett’s memory. He had hoped then to be of 
some beneficent use in the world, and there were moments 
when the self-forgetting consecration of the whole being to 
high and holy ends had seemed to him the one good thing 
in life. The simple words moved him, like a strain of half 
forgotten music, and the perfumed dusk of those distant 
dreaming evenings gathered around him once more. 

“ Has the problem of amelioration come to vex you so 
soon ? ” he asked, with a tender inflection that very nearly 
brought the tears to his eyes. 

“ Is there anyone whom it has not vexed ? ” 

“ More than many — at seventeen.” 

“ You can’t forget the limited number of my years,” said 
Milly, a little of her girlish pique returning upon her. 

“ I couldn’t if I would, and I wouldn’t if I could ; I was 
going to say that I hoped you would never alter in that 


AN £ VENING CALL. 1 65 

respect, but the inhumanity of the wish in its ultimate result, 
if granted, suddenly occurred to me.” 

“ I shall not die within three months,” said Milly, laugh- 
ing. “ Eleanor says she is sure that each one will live until 
his or her work here is accomplished, and I try to lay the 
flattering unction to my soul.” 

“ What is Miss Reese’s work ? ” 

“ I don’t know, yet,” said Milly, doubtfully. “ She has 
not yet discovered her specialty, but she is constantly active 
in helping every thing good and hindering every thing wrong. 
She has been the best of friends and guides to me.” 

“ Pardon me, but I am not quite so sure of that.” 

Milly colored deeply. “ I would find most things less 
difficult to pardon, though I must, since you ask it. I can 
not hear anyone speak ill of Eleanor.” 

“ I have no wish to speak ill of her ; she is one of the 
sweetest of women. But she has the advantage of you in 
years only. Neither in experience or intelligence is she 
qualified to be your leader.” 

“ Oh, you do not know her,” exclaimed Milly. 

“ I know her perfectly well, and like her exceedingly. 
But she makes the common mistake of attempting to cope 
with subjects that are too large for her. She has neither 
the education nor the force to attack social problems that 
puzzle the wisest heads of the times.” 

“ You undervalue her,” said Milly proudly. 

“ Indeed I think not. I admit that she is an exceptional 
woman, philanthropic, earnest, and tinted with intellect. 
But her mind is absolutely untrained, and she has all the 
unreasoning credulity of the silly women for whom she has 
a lofty contempt, which makes her spurn one superstition 
to take refuge in another yet more unworthy. The only 
trouble with Eleanor Reese is that some one once compared 
her to Mrs. Farrar, to whom she bears a slight personal 


i66 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


resemblance. There is a woman now with the brain of a 
philosopher and the heart of a child.” 

“ I wish I knew her better,” said Milly. I have only met 
her once. But,” with rising resentment, “ she is interested 
in the things that you condemn Eleanor for investigating.” 

“ Ah, but with a difference. The calm, perfectly reason- 
able manner with which Mrs. Farrar works is that of one 
open to conviction, free from prejudice, and with only 
enough starch of native bias in certain directions to give 
consistency to a large and gracious personality. Hers is 
the truly scientific nature which calls nothing common or 
unclean until it has tested it, with every chance for a fair trial 
I have no sneers for ‘ advanced women,’ and I believe that 
Mrs. Farrar will one day be a grand, historical figure on the 
canvas of philanthropic record, if ever the crisis comes for 
which even genius must wait. But to return to your friend. 
I think you quite competent to work out your own salvation 
without her assistance.” 

“ There is no one living who could weaken my friendship 
for Eleanor Reese,” cried Milly, vehemently. 

“ Your friendship, certainly not. Why should one wish to 
do that ? But try and arrive at your conclusions inde- 
pendently. Friendship is equality, not the willing spiritual 
submission of the one to the other. Please drive that 
grieved, offended look from your face ; I spoke because you 
interest me, and for a selfish reason. Long ago, it is so 
entirely a matter of history now that I may speak of it with- 
out laying myself under the imputation of more than the 
inevitable share of egotism, I hoped and dreamed as you are 
hoping and dreaming now, that I should be an important 
factor in the happiness of the race. We all of us have these 
morning dreams, and mine lasted long enough to make me 
discontented with the waking life of this work-a-day world. 
I had my chance — we all have one at least — and it hung in 


AN EVENING CALL. 


167 


the balance whether I should become a brilliant failure or 
an unnoticeable success. I think the former won the day.” 

“ Surely, if I am too young to make a determining choice 
with regard to my friends, you must have been so at that 
time in the matter of your fate,” said Milly, very earnestly. 
“ Oh, there are so few people who care about these things 
in the right way, the good people haven’t the knowledge and 
the wise ones haven’t the goodness, that when one has the 
power who doesn’t use it, it seems such a cruel Waste,” she 
stopped, for she felt the perilous approach of tears. “ You 
promised me not to be like the rest,” she concluded, with an 
uncertain smile. 

“ You need make no such promise for yourself,” said 
Haslett, with a fervor that surprised himself, “ nature has 
determined that for you beyond question.” 


CHAPTER XV. 


FIRST LOVE. 

W HEN a young gentleman assures a young lady at the 
end of his first call, that nature has determined that 
she shall be an honorable exception to human mediocrity, 
it is safe to assume that he will call again. 

Haslett found himself frequenting the pretty house in Har- 
bach Street, with a regularity that, when he came to consider 
it, roused in him an amused irritation. It was all very well to 
talk with precocious children, and Haslett was genuinely 
fond of children, but one should be able to organize one’s 
days without including diversions of this sort. He would 
not care to have Ferrard know of the disposition he made 
of so many of his evenings, for despite his assertion that 
equality was among the conditions of friendship, he was 
unconsciously dominated by Ferrard, and gave convincing 
proof of it, in his intense fear of incurring his friend’s seri- 
ous contempt. Ferrard was his only rock ahead, for devo- 
tion to any of Goverick’s fair daughters was rendered easy 
to far less practiced admirers by the simple ethics of that 
city, which, after all, had its Arcadian charms. Something 
of the rustic fashion of courting was observed there, and if 
the words “ steady company ” were occasionally applied to 
a young man of the highest fashion, they were by no means 
intended to describe his moral fitness as a companion for 
youth, but to designate his apparently settled intention of 
calling regularly upon a given young lady. Goverick 
parents did not present in any recorded instance an exag- 


FIRST LOVE. 


169 


gerated type of the scheming worldling, and betrayed no 
more than the normal desire to see their daughters settled 
in life. They were very far from believing that all evening 
calls ended in matrimony, and would no more have restricted 
their daughters’ reception of male guests than they would 
the number of their female friends. They certainly did not 
sit in the kitchen while the young ladies received in the 
parlor, after the primitive fashions of country towns, which 
obsolete custom is apparently cherished as an existing fact 
by contributors to comic papers, but snugly settled them- 
selves up-stairs in the family sitting-room, the father smok- 
ing and reading the evening papers, the mother occupied 
with sewing or mild literature, and would have been equally 
unwilling to sacrifice their comfortable position to the 
unheard of demands of conventional usage, or to dampen 
the pleasure of the young people by intrusion. It would 
have suggested itself to the average Goverick matron 
likely to prove an equal bore to the caller and herself, had 
the propriety of spending an entire evening in the society of 
that gentleman and her daughter been recommended to her. 
Similar ideas obtained with regard to outside recreations ; 
the youth of Goverick were permitted to escort the idol of 
the hour to places of amusements without restraint, and as 
these gentlemen were very frequently impecunious, it was 
decidedly a happy ordinance for them, two theater tickets 
beingmore easy to afford than three, and (on stormy nights) 
a two dollar coup£ sufficing for an unattended couple, when a 
chaperon would have necessitated the extravagance of a 
three dollar coach. 

One who has said most things so well that there seems no 
further need for comment on human limitations, remarks 
that mortals must share the fashions of their time, and none 
but the ancients can be always classical. Haslett was there- 
fore obliged to devote himself to Milly after the manner of 


i “/o 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


his local contemporaries, and in Goverick be as the Gover- 
ickites. He took her out decorously to concerts, lectures, 
and to witness a good play now and then, and he read to 
her well-selected books, and talked with her on a variety of 
subjects in a way that was certainly an improvement on the 
Goverick standard in such matters. 

Rodney Haslett spoke truly when he said that the chance 
for choosing nobly or ignobly comes to us all once ; to many 
fortunate ones the angel of opportunity makes a second 
visit, and he could be counted among these. The bright- 
faced, hard-handed visitant had come to him in his boyhood 
days, and, notwithstanding that his hand had then waved 
unconscious farewell, returned again now in this unadmitted 
crisis, when a fresh young life, suffused with the purest 
aspirations, touched his own. Milly was less unique as a 
girl than she had been as a child, for she had reached a 
stage where the common need of womanhood alternates 
with the altruistic desire for far-reaching benevolent action. 
Yet there was a charm in this very irregularity, blending the 
uncertain promise of a brilliant child with the intellectual 
apprehension of riper years, though the stable qualities of 
matured womanhood were wanting. Haslett had long since 
outworn the impulsive passions of young manhood, but, so 
far as any woman could, she moved him. She had ingenu- 
ousness, intelligence, fervor. 

As the months rolled on, and the girl’s admiration deep- 
ened into woman’s love, she became infinitely more attrac- 
tive. Physically and mentally there was visible develop- 
ment. The large young figure rounded and shaped itself 
into the symmetry of an affluent womanhood. The faint, 
fleeting bloom became the permanent blush of love’s own 
roses. And love, always a more deft lady’s maid than van- 
ity, taught her to wreathe the great waves of russet hair into 
the most charming of frames for the kindling face. In short, 


FIRST LOVE. 


171 

no great, deep-tinted, tropical flower could have been love- 
lier than each new day found happy Milly. 

It was inevitable that knowing Rodney Haslett, the 
impressionable girl should love him ; and inevitable that, 
loving him, she should apotheosize him, with the common- 
place sweetness of every inexperienced girl in the presence 
of first love, the finer consecration of a born hero-worshiper, 
unconscious that it was her own hand which brought 
many of the gifts which called out this imaginative ardor. 
And in Haslett, too, were many of the qualities which might 
well awaken a love at once passionate and spiritual. His 
great personal beauty would, in itself, have attracted the 
girl, in whom the antique love for perfection of form and 
color was a passion, and he added to that a certain quality 
without which beauty is charmless^ an inexplicable attract- 
ive power which many gentle and cold men possess. 

His intellectual ability was unquestioned, and that it was 
that of the thoughtful man of the world rather than the 
dreaming philosopher made it more attractive to unexperi- 
enced Milly. And when to all these charms of nTind and 
person'was added the moral beauty which Milly saw, who 
could wonder that to the child he seemed a complete human 
being — a foreshadowing of the glorious possibilities await- 
ing the human race. How was she to know that these hopes 
and dreams of youth which awakened and throbbed at her 
touch, this moral revival which she witnessed, not knowing 
of her own part therein, was but a passing phase of spiritual 
self-indulgence, and entered with no determining effect into 
a character already formed and hardened into permanent 
shape. 

Every wild extravagance of an unregulated poet she 
indulged in, every sweet, silly everyday fancy of a simple, 
love-stricken maiden. She threw open her window at night 
and softly called his name out upon the darkness, as 


172 


A S COMMON MOR TALS. 


Rochester had called to Jane Eyre, and was undismayed 
when she received no mysterious answer. She cherished 
the flowers he sent her, the books he brought her to read. 
In her shabby little desk she had the usual museum of fool- 
ish, pathetic trifles which every loving woman has kept in 
tender concealment at some time in her life. A bit of lead- 
pencil, with which he had scribbled idly on the margin of a 
newspaper as they talked one night; a rose that had dropped 
from his button-hole ; a few, careless, graceful notes ; a 
bit of ribbon which he had worn in his coat when he had 
been on the reception committee of a regatta ball — oh, the 
folly of it all ! think, wise elders, who have forgotten the 
days of their youth ; oh, the pity of it ! think the tender 
hearts that will never grow old, though the snows of death’s 
coming winter lie heavy on their hair. 

Milly’s conscientious historian can not say that she showed 
any of that inscrutable pride and glacial coldness for which 
many heroines have been remarkable. She welcomed Has- 
lett with unconcealed delight ; she accepted his attentions 
with fr£nk, yet shy pleasure, and she by no means ceased to 
visit Eleanor Reese because her way thither led past the 
door of the elder Haslett, and she might by chance meet 
the younger in the street. It is needless to say that Elea- 
nor was soon in full possession of her innocent little secret, 
if secret it could be called. Haslett’s attentions to Miss 
Reese’s young friend were by no means hidden under a 
bushel, and Eleanor was quick to question the girl, who was 
utterly defenseless in protecting the unhidden treasure of 
her heart. Milly confessed, with many tears and more or 
less dramatic action, her love, new born but equipped for 
eternal life, and assured Eleanor that it would rather fur- 
ther than retard her efforts in the cause of human progress, 
and pictured a glorious future where they should all three 
work together — perhaps all four, for some day should not 


FIRST LOVE. 


173 


some great man, wiser and better than any one yet dis- 
covered — (Milly made a mental reservation here) — come in 
the full meridian of life and fame, to beg Eleanor to permit 
him to assist her in the complicated task of reorganizing 
civilization ? Eleanor was quite ready to accept this view, 
and was still young enough to enjoy the confidence, dear to 
all women, of a promising love affair. Milly repeated to 
her some of the things that Haslett had said, and both 
regarded them with that liberality of interpretation with 
which women put an excess of meaning into the sayings of 
a man whose relation toward them assumes an importance 
in their eyes quite out of proportion to that which it bears 
in his own. Haslett can hardly be blamed for the absolute 
domination he acquired over Milly’s thoughts, yet he was 
not blind to his effect on her. It would have been a curious 
mental ophthalmia which would have prevented him from 
seeing her young adoration for him. And it pleased him. 
It was worth having, and the ultimate disposition he should 
make of it did not trouble him as yet. He felt himself a 
better man in her presence, her ideal trust in him raising 
him for the time being to the height where he saw himself 
stand in the light of that innocent consecration; and Haslett, 
with whom intellectual pleasures took precedence over those 
which are physical, found a yet more delicate delight in the 
moral titillations which resulted from intercourse with an 
unspoiled and highly organized spirit. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


DOUBTS. 

“T WISH I could escape from these occasional attacks of 
1 intense distaste for my own personality,” said Milly 
to Haslett, one night. 

“You are young to suffer from mental dyspepsia,” said 
Haslett. 

“ Oh, young, young, young ! ” cried Milly, impatiently, 
throwing out her arms as if in renunciation of that undesir- 
able youth. 

“ Ah, it does not seem so good a thing to you as it does 
to me. But you will soon get bravely over it, if you keep 
up your present mental habit.” 

“ I don’t think the habit is entirely my own fault,” said 
Milly, rather penitently. “ Blame this accursed, sesthetical, 
ethical age.” 

“Ah, now I know that your youth still holds its own.” 

“ It is rather callow to quote Owen Meredith. Yet he 
says a pretty thing now and then.” 

“ That is one of the characteristics of the condemnqd 
age ; — every one says pretty things.” 

“ They take it out in talk,” said Milly. “No one does 
them. There seems to be no medium for the performance 
of graceful or heroic actions.” 

“ For no man dreams 
That the scant isthmus he encamps upon 
Between two oceans, one, the stormy, passed, 

And one, the tranquil, yet to venture on, 


DOUBTS. 


175 


Has been that future whereto prophets yearned 
For the fulfillment of earth’s cheated hopes, 

Shall be that past which nerveless poets moan 
As the lost opportunity of song,” 

quoted Haslett. 

“ Don’t you know, child, that the limited romantic facili- 
ties of the day are what all the poets are howling about ? It 
is really delightful that you should not know how trite you 
are. Be sure that your own time affords as excellent con- 
ditions for fine action as any dimly understood, time-con- 
secrated epoch of the past. Our own war will form the 
theme for a battle epic which will throw all the tales of 
classic rows into the shade. Do you remember any thing 
about it ? Hardly, I suppose.” 

“ I can only recall distinctly one day when mamma was 
crying as if her heart would break, and papa stood by her, 
looking so white and miserable that I ran to him and 
begged him to tell me what had happened. And he said : 
< Lincoln is dead ; they have shot him.’ And mamma sobbed 
out ‘ And this, this is the end of the war.’ I was not much 
more than a baby at the time, but I have never forgotten 
that day.” 

“ Ah, those were times,” said Haslett. “ Life was worth 
living then, — whichever side one took. I remember being 
wild to enter the ranks, and being restrained on the ground 
which is so unsafe to mention to you,” he concluded smil- 
ing. 

“ I think it was very hard on you.” 

“ Oh, no it wasn’t. I should only have been one of the 
countless dead boys, of no use to the cause, and, on the 
whole, a loss to myself. It doesn’t pay to enter any contest 
until we are equipped for it. And that applies to other 
struggles than the one enacted on those Southern fields 
§0 many years ago. One may be wounded and lost, spirit;- 


176 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


ually speaking, and all for naught. I should not like that 
to be your fate.” 

“ You mean — 

“ I mean — to speak plainly — that I wish you would not 
attend socialistic meetings, or spiritualistic seances, or 
any conventions, the import of which you do not fully under- 
stand.” 

“ Don’t you think I am able to take care of myself ? ” 
asked Milly, bridling. 

“ Certainly not.” 

“ But I have Eleanor.” 

“ You know that I consider her equally incapable of tak- 
ing care of you.” 

“ She has other things to do. But that which is injurious 
to me must harm her also. Why do you not interfere in 
her behalf ? ” 

“ It would be taking an unwarrantable liberty. She is 
old enough to decide for herself as to the disposition she 
will make of her life. It is not my affair.” 

The implication that her proceedings were counted 
among Haslett’s affairs delighted Milly, but she had a cer- 
tain power of sturdy persistence which made her equal to 
the resistance of even his expressed opinions. 

“ Do you think one should consider social position and 
the speech of others when one is working for large ends ? ” 
she asked, and concluded with a little laugh, “ Especially 
when one has no social position to consider.” 

“ I have an immense respect for public opinion.” 

“ So have I — for the public opinion that will obtain in 
the next century,” said Milly, with the boundless arrogance 
of youth. 

“There is always the chance that one may not live to 
profit by the better developed taste of the coming age.” 

“ I suppose I am nothing more than a moral fidget. AH 


DOUBTS. 


177 


self-conscious people are fidgets, and I am conscious of my 
own self-consciousness.” 

“ Every one that has any self to speak of is conscious of 
it in these days.” 

“ I wonder why.” 

“ Change of base in the matter of religious faith.” 

“ Except now and then at Melpomene Hall, I see very 
little of that.” 

“ The saints of the Lord in Goverick are well established 
on their firm foundation. No, I know you don’t see it, but 
it is in the air.” 

“ But why should that make us self-conscious ? ” 

“ Because it leaves so little else to be conscious of. A 
religion that is anthropomorphic may be one adapted only 
to the rudimentary cultus of a slowly developing race, yet 
the undoubted fact remains that as we cease to invest Deity 
with human attributes we lose the confiding joyousness of 
our faith. Ponder on the dead religion of the Greek, that 
happy polytheism, with its familiar, easy-to-be-entreated 
gods lurking in every bush and stream and forest-glade, 
playing their pretty pranks in a wickedly human fashion, 
those gay, jovial deities and demi-deities, who banqueted 
and flirted and frolicked from earth to Olympus. Then 
remember the peasant, confidingly and familiarly address- 
ing the saints, often canonized from a rank in life like his 
own. What chance for simple happiness have we, compared 
with the ancient Greek ; the modern Latin? The only vivid 
personalities in our own somber religion are the melancholy 
figure of Christ ; the stern presence of Jehovah. Yet even 
these austere satisfactions are slipping away from us, to be 
replaced by fine abstractions such as we find in Hadfield’s 
soi-disant theology. What is left for us but introspection ? 
God is only Goodness, and we look within for a hint of that. 
And there we find so much to make us sad that this note of 


* 7 « 


A S COM Ad ON MOR TA L S. 


woeful disillusion runs through all our songs and stories 
and susceptibilities, like a tear down the face of creation. 
The human race in enlightened quarters is like a forlorn 
child, who goes off into a corner to cry its small heart out 
because there isn’t any Santa Claus. 

“ Though there may be beauty in the thought that we may 
‘ slip like a dew-drop into the shining sea ’ of pure being 
with the orientalist, or live again in bud or flower or shift- 
ing vapor with the materialist, the sadly enlightened soul 
looks back with regretful tenderness to the genial invitation: 
“ Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you from the foundation of the world \” 

r Oh, you surely keep something of the early faith — the 
enduring and essential part — ” cried Milly, urgently, and 
with swimming eyes. 

“T’were best not to consider too curiously, my child. 
But I am tolerably sure of one or two things, and one is 
that you have taught me to find a new meaning in forgot- 
ten legends. Are you tired of your unpromising pupil ? ” 

“ Oh, you know I am not. And it is wrong for you to 
speak of yourself and me in that way. I could never teach 
you any thing.” 

“ Are you quite sure of that ? ” asked Haslett, softly, and 
with meaning. 

Milly’s cheeks were burning, but she answered bravely, 
“ I have not yet learned a tenth part of the things you have 
forgotten.” 

“ There are always unmastered branches,” said Haslett, 
watching the mantling color with pleasure. “ If I told you 
that in addition to these, you were teaching me the lost art 
of hope, what would you say ? ” 

“ That I was very glad,” answered Milly, in a low voice. 

“ Do you know how glad you can make me ? ” asked Has- 
lett, slowly, still watching the eloquent face. 


DOUBTS. 


179 


" No," came the answer, in a whisper. 

“ Ah, then I must wait," he said, rising abruptly. “ The 
time is not yet. Shall I conform to Goverick methods and 
take you to church Sunday night ? Though I shall diverge 
from accepted standards enough to choose Melpomene 
Hall for a place of worship." 

“ If you will," said Milly, rising also, with a certain sense 
of being thrown back upon herself. 

Outside the door Haslett came face to face with Ferrard. 

“ I thought so," said the latter. 

“ Thought what ? " said Haslett, a little sharply. 

“ That on any of my occasional strolls through this 
street I should be likely to meet you." 

“ Why not ? " said Haslett, facing him squarely. 

“ Well, why not, to be sure, if you can reconcile yourself 
to an unconscionable waste of time.” 

“ Come, Ferrard. You are no misogynist ; that is an 
affectation impossible to you. Why should it be a waste of 
time to devote an occasional evening to a pretty and intelli- 
gent girl ? " 

“ It absorbs too much of your thoughts." 

“ Do you think I am permitting my affections to begome 
involved ? " asked Haslett, in a tone of unpersonal curiosity. 

“ I did not know that you had any left, Rod. But you 
are always weakening yourself by sentimental preoccupation 
with some woman. I’ve told you that before without any 
perceptible effect. I wish you would marry." 

“ And if I did — " 

“ If you did it need be another than the young woman 
who monopolizes so much of your time just now." 

“There is stuff in her." 

“ Of an inflammable sort which promises ill for your future 
comfort, if you persist in making her Mrs. Haslett. 
Besides, there are other considerations." 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


i So 

“ Such as what ? ” 

“ Material advancement.” 

“You would never think of that for yourself, Ferrard.” 

“ Never. I can do without it. You can not.” 

“ Thanks.” 

“ Listen to me, Rodney,” said Ferrard, linking his pow- 
erful arm in the slighter one of his friend. “You must 
know that I do you justice, always. You distance me in a 
hundred ways. But you were not born to hard fighting, as 
I was. I have gauged my own nature so well that I am 
perfectly conscious of the points where I can afford to 
indulge myself. When I marry, I intend that it shall be a 
matter of individual preference. There is no reason why it 
should be otherwise in my case. A wife will influence me 
very little, and I can take care of her and myself and all 
future Ferrards without suffering from any impairment of 
mental power. It is like breathing my native air to strug- 
gle against adverse circumstance. But you will do best 
when all the minor details of life are made smooth for you. 
I am quite of the opinion of the Northern Farmer, ‘ Doan’t 
thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is.’ ” 

“ You will be a better fellow for escaping attrition ; you 
haven’t any angles to rub off. I have. Don’t load yourself 
down with the charge of another life that can be of no 
benefit to you, materially or mentally. Besides,” added 
Ferrard, with what would have been sadness in another 
man, “ what does it all amount to in the end ? Marriage 
is rather a clumsy contrivance for tiding over a social diffi- 
culty, and which, after a few months of imaginary bliss, 
resolves itself into either a friendly alliance, or a chronic civil 
war. Are you going to hamper your whole career for the 
sake of a brief sojourn in fool’s paradise ? And in the present 
instance it would certainly mean civil war, eventually ; for 
that young woman is not plastic, though she may appear so 


DOUBTS. 


1S1 

in the first stages of melting rapture at your unexpected 
homage. It is not fair to the girl to keep this sort of 
thing up indefinitely; it is not fair to yourself to make a defi- 
nite matrimonial conclusion inevitable. I always agreed,” 
concluded Ferrard simply, “ with the king whose subjects 
wondered at his moral rectitude in the midst of the most 
dissolute court of a dissolute age. A favored courtier 
asked him one day to explain his fidelity to his royal spouse* 
and his majesty answered wisely that one woman was quite 
as good as another.” 

Haslett winced a little ; Ferrard’s reasonable brutality 
hurt while it convinced him. “ Even you are less Napole- 
onic than your doctrines,” he said. “ If woman is only 
la femelle de /’ honune to you, why do you choose to exercise 
the full liberty of private preference in your own case ? ” 

“ Because I feel free to do so without danger of damag- 
ing more serious interests. When you can secure the 
pleasure of the hour without spoiling the plan of a life- 
time, it is always best to take advantage of the opportunity.” 

“ You have a code of ethics of your own, Ferrard.” 

" Who has not ? ” 

“ I am far from being sure of mine.” 

“ I’m not. But you don’t live up to your doctrines, 
man.” 

“ Who does ? ” 

“ I do.” 

“ Upon my word, I believe you,” exclaimed Haslett. 
“ You are a great fellow, Paul.” 

“ If greatness consists in the power of maintaining a posi- 
tion, once taken, I ought to be. But you have exercised 
much courtesy in the course of this conversation in not 
requesting me to go to the devil, Rodney.” 

“ Did any one ever venture to recommend that course to 
you ? ” asked Haslett, laughing. 


182 


A S COMMON MOR TALS. 


“ Not within my recollection. But many, have longed t a 
do so. And you did not even cherish a passing desire to 
speed me on the downward way. I saw that.” 

“ There would have been no use,” said Haslett, rather 
spiritlessly. lie suddenly felt a sick distaste for Ferrard, for 
Milly, for himself, for every thing. Ferrard noted this 
with satisfaction, and said no more. 

Haslett parted from his friend rather abruptly, when their 
paths diverged, and when he had reached his own house and 
room, flung himself into an easy chair with the action that 
always betrays the disturbance of a mind not at unity with 
itself. There is a famous proverb which assures us that 
easy is the descent to hell. As a matter of fact, it is as dif- 
ficult to a person who starts in life with the powers of good 
and evil equally balanced in his nature, as the ascent to 
heaven. Temptations to wrong may assail us, but well- 
nourished influences draw us toward the right and away 
from our own consenting deterioration with equal strength. 
Rodney Haslett was sorely beset by his better impulses that 
night. For once, ultimate moral triumph and immediate 
pleasure joined forces. 

Duty pointed him to where inclination beckoned. He 
knew that, and he knew also, had known for some little time, 
the direction in which interest lured him. He was not 
vain, but he knew what he could do. And as he pondered, 
alone in his familiar room, memory, so often the tender 
ministrant of holy resolve, came to the aid of interest. 
Determinism was Haslett’s creed. He had no choice but to 
obey the strongest motive. The slow preparation of cir- 
cling years was not to be set at naught. But the struggle 
had been determined as well as the final choice, and he 
wished now that many things, past and present, had been 
otherwise. 

There was one memory in his life from which he shrunk 


DOUBTS . 


1*3 

with a scorching sense of moral failure. It was an episode 
neither in consonance with the fine impulses of his unequal 
youth, or the selfish line of correct conduct his matured 
judgment had marked out. A year after leaving college he 
had met with a woman who became his companion for sev- 
eral seasons. Haslett was a gentleman, and the vulgar 
cruelty which leads to the betrayal of innocence was impos- 
sible to him. Equally impossible to one of his fastidious 
temper was it to soil his life by a temporary alliance with 
that of an adventuress. The woman who shared his for- 
tunes for that brief time was a pretty and intelligent creat- 
ure, who, by one pitiful, half-conscious misstep of almost 
childish days, had forever shut herself out from the honora- 
ble joys of womanhood. Since that early time she had 
been living under the protection of a man of elegant tastes, 
who treated her with the scrupulous care which he extended 
to the various objects of beauty with which he had sur- 
rounded himself in his New York apartment. He, however, 
began to feel the necessity for forming a new collection, 
and considered America to be inadequate as a store-house 
of art from which one of his discrimination might draw. 
Europe presented attractions which he felt to be incompati- 
ble with further enjoyment of his young friend’s society, and 
it was at this juncture that Rodney Haslett had met him, 
and in a short time relieved him happily from all embarrass- 
ment in the matter, adding at the same time an interest to 
his own life, that, in the lull which sometimes ensues 
between promise and performance, had been sadly lacking 
before. 

There had always been the element of uneasy conscience 
in the relations he assumed toward the friendless woman, a 
mere girl in years. He had brought no harm to her, he had 
kept her from falling into rougher hands, and yet this was 
not what he had meant to do in the old days when he and 


1 84 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Ferrard had walked together, arm in arm, and planned a 
future, selfish indeed, but stainless. He thought of the aus- 
tere purity of Ferrard’s life with a sigh of unavailing regret. 
Yet the sense of entanglement in the meshes of a base 
passion was quite absent from the connection, and the com- 
panionship, the sense of common interest with another life, 
was necessary to him. 

Ferrard was in the far West with a traveling party of stu- 
dents, who intended crossing the Pacific Ocean before their 
return. No other man could fill Ferrard’s place. This 
woman touched his affections, and appealed to his intelli- 
gence. At one time he thought seriously of marrying her. 
It struck him, who hoped one day to make and modify the 
laws of his country, as a curious manifestation of human 
justice, that the delicate creature who had always been the 
tempted and never the temptress, should be shut out hope- 
lessly from the honors and legitimate pleasures of exist- 
ence, while he and his predecessor were not called upon to 
express a shadow of the penitence, of which the most lavish 
expenditure on the part of the branded woman would fail to 
win re-instating charity. He had very nearly asked the 
question which in this case would have carried with it the 
assurance of full, humble, assenting rapture, but his unfail- 
ing habit of analysis stopped him. He reasoned that in the 
scheme of things in general he was of more value than the 
woman who loved him. Since one must suffer, it was bet- 
ter, widely considered, that it should be she. And he 
meant to make the inevitable suffering as light as possible. 
But it was right that he should give himself every human 
advantage. He would be utterly ruined by a marriage of 
this sort in the eyes of a society which would blandly but 
consciously ignore his irregular union. 

He was living in New York at the time, spending an 
occasional Sunday with his family in Goverick. Haslettwas 


DOUBTS. 


*5 


one in whom family feeling was very strong, and in whom 
affection survives the early out-grown congeniality of mere 
blood-binding. 

His parents and sisters were plain, simple people, rigid 
in principle, narrow in knowledge. They guessed nothing 
of the circumstances of his life away from them. They would 
consider that his marriage with a woman who had been his 
mistress was the last final touch of a completed degrada- 
tion ; it would be impossible for them to regard it as moral 
salvation for him as well as for her. No, he could not do it. 

It all came back to him now, the last month of that fur- 
tive union. He thought of the worries, the cares, the ham- 
pering of his mental activity by the weight of responsibility. 
She had looked less charming to him when he counted out 
the dollars for her simple dress, and thought with some bit- 
terness of the expenditure of force for their procuring which 
might have gone in other ways so much more to be desired. 

At last the poor child sickened and died. As Haslett 
looked down at the placid face from which the mysteriously 
troubled life had fled, he could but feel that death had been 
the only solution of the problem, that it was best for him, 
and oh, how far best for her. His lips touched the frozen 
cheek for the last time, and tears, which were rather of 
remorse than regret, fell fast on the- slender, finally folded 
hands. 

No accident or episode of our lives can be said to change 
our natures ; character goes beyond the touch of chance ; 
but our future actions are often powerfully affected by a 
single incident. Haslett formed no other liaison. He 
would not swerve again from his ideal, for the sake of his 
conscience and his interest. And two things had been 
deeply impressed upon him by this sad, severed connection, 
—the fleeting nature of passion, the enduring restrictions 
of poverty. 


i86 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


These two hard facts confronted him now. 

There had been nothing in the nature of the dead woman 
which could make his critical soul shrink from putting that 
broken tie on the same mental plane with marriage, or made 
it seem a base profanation of Milly’s spotless innocence to 
think of that other in the hour when he strove to adjust his 
future relation to the unconscious child to his own satisfac- 
tion. That he found a more complete charm in the society 
of Millicent than he had ever known was certain, but where 
would the freshness, the originality, be after a few years of 
marriage and maternity ? Haslett was not rich. He could 
indulge the elegant tastes which were second nature to him 
now, as a bachelor ; as a married man, unless he married 
some one whose maintenance need not concern him, these 
must be resigned, cut out, rather, with difficulty and pain. 
Ferrard’s words: “What does it all amount to in the 
end ? ” rang insistently in his ears. 

Yet he could not blame Ferrard, or consider that he 
lowered his standard in taking that attitude. Ferrard 
acted consistently always, and lived up to his definite idea 
of duty with rigorous fidelity. He would cut off his strong 
right hand sooner than commit an act or fall into a mental 
habit which seemed to him shameful. Why should right 
for Paul Ferrard be wrong for Rodney Haslett, who knew 
himself in that moment to be the lesser, faultier man ? 

Plaslett lifted his hands from the arms of his chair, and 
let them fall again, heavily, impatiently. A look of frustra- 
tion broke up the strenuous thoughtfulness of his expres- 
sion. 

“ Give me time,” he said to himself in a tone of angry 
unrewarded fatigue. “ There is no need to decide— yet.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 


HASLETT RESOLVES. 

M ONTHS were doing the work of years for Milly in 
these days. Constant intercourse with a mind like 
that of Haslett held a perilous power of development for 
an impressionable nature. Old faiths were crumbling, new 
ideas were heaping themselves one upon the other, until a 
fantastic form stood before her, yet she was only half-con- 
scious of the readjustment of her mental world, as the tide 
of human love swept up within her and threatened to sub- 
merge all else. This intense inward life found little expres- 
sion in the prosaic round of her daily existence. Even the 
rather strained relation between herself and Haslett was 
maintained in that common air in which, after all, young 
love thrives marvelously well. 

It had become a custom with Haslett to accompany Milly 
to the Sunday evening services at Melpomene Hall, and 
the two had walked home with Miss Reese, Haslett escort- 
ing Milly to her father’s house after performing the friendly 
office for that lady. 

One night he had looked pale and tired, and Milly, alive to 
the faintest change in his appearance, had said, “ Why do 
you not walk home with me first ? It does not take Eleanor 
out of her way, and will save you a second journey, as your 
homes lie so near together.” 

A little thing, born of the tender, care-taking instinct of 
a loving woman, yet it was a generous word. That walk 
home alone with Haslett had been very precious to Milly, 


1 88 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


and on the half-hour’s chat for which he had sometimes 
entered the house at its conclusion, she set all a girl’s exag- 
gerated value. Haslett had laughed a little, gently, at 
the maternal solicitude of her tone, but once or twice had 
taken advantage of her suggestion, and Milly bravely bore 
the little twinge of lonely disappointment, as she stood on 
the steps alone and saw her idol walk off with Eleanor on 
his arm. 

She would go bravely up to her little room, and seat her- 
self on the bed to dream, in the old, childish fashion. There 
was a constant inward repetition of all Haslett’s words, a 
ceaseless dwelling on his looks, and, at times, a distressed 
sense of having left unsaid that which she would have 
chosen to say, and an intense longing to see him again and 
fill in the omission, and also atone for any verbal commis- 
sions which she feared might have offended him. u I have 
left undone those things which I ought to have done, and I 
have done those things which I ought not to have done," 
she murmured, with a confused recollection of Aunt Maria’s 
prayer-book. But she was too young and too happy to add 
“ And there is no health in me She would have veiled 
her face, even when alone with herself, at an intrusive 
thought which might definitely suggest that she might one 
day become Haslett’s wife. 

That bliss was too great and too awful to be approached 
even in imagination — yet. But that he might come to care 
for her — not as she cared for him ; how could that be ? but 
more than for any other woman ; that he might call her by 
an endearing name now and then — even kiss her — Milty’s 
cheeks flamed at the daring thought — that he might in 
time bestow on her the secure rapture of a chosen maiden, 
all this Milly ventured to hope, and in time, to believe. 
Oh, how could she ever be good enough to deserve this 
unspeakable joy ? 


HA SEE TT RE SOL VES. 


189 


“ I have found my work,” she murmured to herself in 
these transports of reverent passion. “ I could never be of 
any use in the world, all by myself, because I know so little. 
But he — oh ! was there ever any one like him, so wise, so 
beautiful, so good ? And I am not so small but that I can 
help him. If he will only let me be near him always, so that 
I can see that no trouble reaches him ! There are so many 
little things in life that nobody seems to recognize when 
they write or speak about it, yet that hold such fearful power 
for hindrance. I will run before him as he walks, and weed 
them out of his path. Ah, I would lie down in it and let 
him set his foot on my heart, if that would raise him any 
higher. My love, I would, I would ! Oh, how dare I call 
him that, even to myself ? And yet — if he did not care for 
me — a little — would he seek me as he does ? And he 
told me that I helped him, / — ” happy tears swept away the 
words. 

But the time came when the tears mingled bitter with the 
sweet, when Hilly sat for many evenings alone, waiting with 
a sinking heart for the sound of his step on the outer stair, 
of his voice within the door. When she heard it, the rapid 
throbbing almost took away her breath. There was a differ- 
ence in her welcome now. The simple delight of loving 
him was marred by the consciousness of her foreboding of 
change in their relations. It was inevitable that she should 
be less charming- to him when her pure pleasure in his 
society gave way to the transparent, painful effort to make 
her own so attractive to him that the lengthening intervals 
between his calls should become short as of old. She 
turned over all her poor little gauds and ornaments each 
evening with a trembling hand, striving to make herself fair 
in his sight. And so often he did not come to see ! She 
thought of little things to say which might please him, and 
when he came they halted on her lips and left her dumb- 


190 AS COMMON MOR TALS. 

Who can be entertaining when the whole being is tense with 
anxiety ? What had she done ? She tried, with the pitiful, 
evident effort of her eighteen years to bring about the old 
state of affairs, and with each unpracticed, futile endeavor 
she broke a link of the chain that bound him to her. Milly 
had had nothing to offer Haslett but the bright originality 
of happy youth. That was gone. The constraint of her 
manner made her suddenly commonplace and unengaging, 
and each meeting with her but served to strengthen Haslett’s 
resolve. For he had resolved. And he intended to fortify 
himself in that by placing himself permanently outside of 
the embroiling circle of such complications. He had 
decided when to marry, and whom. 

He was not in love with his elect lady, but he liked her. 
She was handsome, healthy, intelligent, and would possess 
the material qualifications so much to be desired in a wife 
for a man of large ambitions and small income. She 'was 
several years older than himself, which was another point 
in her favor, for Haslett had not studied human, and 
especially feminine nature in vain, and was aware that a 
woman past her first youth makes the best of wives to a 
young man, being pricked on constantly to the achievement 
of the most perfect and submissive conjugal behavior bv 
the consciousness that some slight effort is necessary to 
the retention of her husband’s less matured affections. 
And this, the caprice and fever of girlhood being past, is 
easier to attain. Haslett knew that as the world sees, the 
object of his intentions was marred by more markedly dis- 
turbing tendencies than were visible in Milly Barron. 

But he knew also that Ferrard had spoken truly in deny- 
ing the existence of plasticity in Milly’s nature. When once 
her character had formed, it would possess unmodifiable 
qualities. As the child’s ideal worship of him developed 
into the acuteness of woman’s knowledge, there would be 


HA SLE TT RE SOL VES. 1 9 1 

conflict. She was ready to die for him now, because he 
represented the highest right to her ; she would be ready 
to sacrifice him and herself to the large, abstract concep- 
tion which would surely come to her later. As for the 
other, Haslett knew her perfectly well. Given a husband 
and children of her own, her imposing idea of the sphere of 
women in general and herself in particular, would, with ready 
facility, resolve itself into the proudly domestic. He saw in 
her what was after all the most comfortable type for a life- 
companion, a sweet-tempered, complaisant, probably pro- 
lific, and certainly wealthy woman, who would easily assimi- 
late her husband’s opinions, and firmly believe in them as 
the result of her own unassisted judgment. 

Milly did not confide her dawning trouble to Eleanor 
Reese, for she was seeing rather less of her friend in these 
days. The sick soul turned weakly from the contemplation 
of large ideas, and she noticed a growing constraint in 
Eleanor’s manner, which she attributed to her own slack- 
ened enthusiasm for impersonal ends, and which seemed 
part of the deepening dreariness around her. There were 
other reasons too, why she should not intrude upon Eleanor’s 
thoughts, for old Mr. Reese had lately died. 

“ Are you going to your meeting to-night, Nell ? ” he 
asked, rather wistfully one Sunday evening. 

“ Yes, father ; do you want any thing before I go ? ” 
replied and inquired Eleanor, with her accustomed amia- 
bility. 

“ No, I don’t want to trouble you,” he answered % taking 
up the paper with a hand that was more tremulous than 
usual. 

“ it will not trouble me to do any thing for you,” said 
Eleanor, kindly, abstractedly hunting for a lost pamphlet. 

“ I don’t know as I want any thing, and I don’t want to 
trouble you,” reiterated the old man. 


192 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Well, he had troubled no one in the course of his long, 
dull, hard-working life, and he troubled no one at its end. 
When Eleanor returned from her meeting, she found him 
sitting as she had left him, the newspaper still clutched 
in the cold hands, steady now under the quiet touch of 
death. 

Milly flew to her friend when she heard the news, a vague 
remorse stirring her because she had not set more value on 
the silent old man who had lived perfectly well cared for and 
entirely unnoticed, in the fine house which had been built up 
by so many unrecognized self-denials, so many unknown 
privations on his part. Life sometimes overlays the soul 
in our faces with disturbing hieroglyphics which gentle death 
smooths away, showing worthy writing there. As Milly 
looked at the kind old face, placid as an infant’s in its last 
slumber, a certain patient nobility shone out upon her 
through all its worn lines. How many of these denied 
lives passed out into darkness each day, fated to be present 
at the grand spectacle of human existence, given each a part 
in the tremendous drama, yet uncomprehending, unenthusi- 
astic and dumbly faithful ! A pang shot through her as 
she remembered her selfish absorption in her own loves and 
woes. How did her eighteen years of conscious effort show 
beside the three score and ten of material struggle that 
asked and expected nothing better ? 

With ardent sympathy she flung her arms around 
Eleanor, who kissed her, weeping gently, but did not draw 
her within the old circle of intimacy, Milly dimly felt. In 
the days that followed the funeral, and indeed for weeks 
after, Eleanor was very busy. There was a large property 
to accept and arrange, many papers to sign and men of 
business and lawyers to consult. Milly felt that there was 
no place for her in the mingling of business and bereave- 
ment which is so common a combination in this strange 


HA SLE TT RE SOL VES. 


193 


existence of ours. And besides, very lately, things had 
begun to look brighter. Haslett had been rather more with 
her, and in his manner there was an embarrassment not 
unlike her own. She was cheered and comforted by the 
thought that perhaps each was misunderstanding the other. 
It would all come right, it must all come right, for Milly 
dared not face the thought of a permanent alienation. 
There are some calamities to which we concede others to 
be liable, but which are inconceivable as befalling ourselves. 
That she should be crossed in love like the hapless maidens 
whom history and fiction alike bemoan, that she could be a 
loser in this chief stake of woman’s life, could not occur to 
Milly as a serious possibility. The present was hard to 
bear, that was all. She could not bear to lose a moment of 
full sympathy from their mutual life. 

One evening, about a year from the date of their first 
meeting, Haslett called upon her. It was a happier even- 
ing than Milly had known for a long time. Something in 
her mood adjusted itself to his, or perhaps, for once, he 
found the studied gentleness of her demeanor more 
attractive than the vanished child’s unconsciousness, the 
budding woman’s joy. 

“ I believe that you believe in me ! ” he said sud- 
denly. 

“ You have every ground for your belief in my belief,” 
returned Milly, almost playfully, rejoiced at the return 
to personalities which seemed to put them on their old 
footing. 

“ You have been a friend to me,” said Haslett. “ I 
honestly think you would do much to assure a lasting good 
to me.” 

“ More than much.” 

Haslett turned his head aside a little restlessly. 

“ Can you understand,” he said at last, “ that a man may 


194 


AS COMMON MORTALS . 


come to view himself with the impersonal regard of a 
devoted friend? and sacrifice his pleasure as a friend 
might, for the sake of securing what seems to be the pre- 
ponderance of good in his life.” He. hated himself, and 
his lame, uncharacteristic speech in that moment. 

“ I — think I can,” said Milly, her sweet eyes wide with 
wonder. 

“ Can you understand that a life of mental activity and 
well-bestowed influence on a fair moral level, maybe a bet- 
ter thing than one in which one rises to the utmost height 
of being at times, and sinks back, because of material limi- 
tations, into inevitable lapse ? Is it best to mortgage one’s 
future on the chance of realizing — for once — the extreme 
possibilities of one’s better nature ? ” 

“ I do not understand,” said Milly. 

“ I don’t wonder,” said Haslett, with a light, hard laugh. 
“ Well, blessedness is better than happiness, and it may be 
yet better than either to resign both for a full share in the 
common, unecstatic good of life. The man of action is the 
complete man.” 

Milly had no answer ready. She was impressed by a 
profound melancholy in Haslett’s manner, which yet found 
no definite expression in word or look. 

“ Does any thing trouble you ? ” she asked at last, in a 
tone of tender inquiry. 

“ Trouble me ? No. I am the happiest of men with the 
most solid reasons for my happiness. But the happiness 
we experience in this best of all possible worlds is an 
emotion which does not always bear strict analysis.” 

“ The really happy people never analyze,” said Milly. 

“ So you have discovered that ! Happiness usually 
leaves that triste bit of knowledge with one when she says 
Good-By. But I speak as a fool. You are a child, a 
baby, your whole life lies before you, unaffected by the 


HA SLE TV RE SOL VES. 


r 95 


trivial happenings of to-day. There is nothing enduring 
in the present phase of your existence.” Haslett rose and 
paced up and down the room. “ Nothing enduring ! ” he 
repeated, insistently. He turned a somber look, full of 
unwilling tenderness upon her. 

“ Will you promise always to think of me at my best, 
little girl ? ” 

“ I am afraid I can not see wherein you excel yourself ; 
it is all best ” — she stopped, with a difficult smile. 

“ You will, some day. When the woman sits in 
judgment on me, I want the girl to plead for me. Will 
she ? ” 

“ Oh, why do you ask me that ? ” exclaimed Milly, feel- 
ing herself mysteriously tortured. “ Don’t you know that 
you need beg for no indulgence, now, or ever ? ” 

Haslett stopped in his walk. “ I know it — too well,” he 
said. “ I must go.” 

“ So soon ! ” said Milly. 

“ So late.” he answered, bitterly. “ Good-by.” 

Milly held out her little fluttering hand. “ Have I dis- 
pleased you in any .way ? ” she asked with a trembling 
lip. 

“ No ! ” answered Haslett, with a perceptible effort. 

She took heart at that and went on : “I know I do not 
understand you always, but indeed I try. 1 would rather 
be of use to you than any thing else in the world.” The 
words were spoken as simply as if they had been the 
promise of a chidden child to be good. 

Haslett’s heart failed him. He lifted the hand to his 
lips, where it fluttered no more, but palpitated gently 
beneath his touch. He laid it down at last, with the rev- 
erent care with which we put back in place a dead hand 
which has so lately closed with love’s warmth on our own. 
But it clasped his, holding that fast, and, with the sweetest 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


196 

gesture, Milly laid her burning cheek against it. Haslett 
stood quite still for a moment, looking down on the bright 
bowed head. Then he turned away. Millicent could not 
raise her eyes to his as he passed from her sight, and lost 
in them the sadness of an eternal farewell. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


NEWS. 

T HE tragedies of our lives are rarely enacted with a good 
stage setting, and are perhaps all the more tragical for 
the incongruity. Certain obsolete authors have chosen to 
arrange that their afflicted heroes and heroines should 
receive the word of doom in — say a cavern, fitfully illumi- 
nated by blue flames, dark, sulphurous, mysterious, while 
the thunder rolls, the lightning flashes and the tempest 
howls without. The cavern has happily long since fallen 
into disuse, but natural phenomena and artificial parapher- 
nalia of woe have been employed to heighten the effect of 
despair in fiction that has hardly ceased to be contemporary. 
Still, the interpreters of human nature are beginning, through 
their vocation, to understand what a dis-illusionized world 
wants, and to tell the truth with unadorned realism. They 
know now that the very pith and core of tragedy lies in the 
fact of its enactment in the midst of commonplace, every- 
day surroundings; that the death-knell of many a human 
hope is sounded at the dinner-table between soup and 
fish ; that we may hear the word that turns the world gray 
for us above the tame tinkle of a piano, and that we may 
bid a long farewell to all our greatness on the steps of a 
ribbon-shop or in the cabin of a ferry-boat. 

To Milly, in the midst of the light prose of her girlish con- 
trivances, came tidings which, like an unkindly wind, shook 
her young soul out of its nest and dashed it rudely to the 
ground, where it fluttered, breathless, bruised, sorely 


198 AS COMMON MOR TAL S. 

wounded, unconscious of the wings that would one day lift 
it. into free air. 

She was singing softly to herself, and stepping lightly 
around the bed whereon was spread a dainty gown to which 
she was adding, with some difficulty and lack of skill, a few 
ornaments. 

She stopped suddenly, and looked up with a bright smile 
as Helen entered the room, cool, neat and exquisite after a 
brisk walk. Hilly loved even Helen to-day, poor Helen, 
still ignorant of life’s best blessing. Helen returned her 
kiss with her accustomed composure, and stood looking 
down at the embellished gown with the air of one whose 
just criticism is disarmed by courtesy. 

“ I am improving my last summer’s grenadine with those 
bows,” said Milly, in amicable explanation. 

“ Yes ? ” said Helen, not permitting the note of interroga- 
tion to be too evident. “ Shall you wear it at the wedding ? 
Of course on account of the recent death, there will be no 
one there but the two families, but you are so very intimate 
with them that I suppose you will be counted in.” 

“ What wedding ? ” asked Milly, in amaze. 

Helen’s merciless gray eyes fastened themselves on the 
wondering face, and a suddenly confirmed impression 
deepened the blush rose bloom of her delicate skin. 

“ It isn’t worth while to pretend ignorance,” she said, 
none the less quietly. “Your intimacy with both of them 
has been so marked that you were probably aware of the 
engagement as soon as they were themselves. Of course I 
anticipated the future in speaking of the wedding. I have 
heard nothing definite about that.” 

“ I honestly do not in the least understand you, 
Helen,” said Milly, thoroughly mystified. 

Helen believed her implicitly, but had no intention of 
expressing that belief. 


ME IV S. • 


199 


“You behave as well as the forewarned victim of a sur- 
prise party,” she said, lightly. “ But we were the ones to 
be surprised, for we all thought it would be you who would 
claim our congratulations. But you have apparently been 
so entirely in Mr. Haslett’s confidence that you must 
have known his intentions before Miss Reese did. If she 
has not told you, certainly he has not failed to acquaint you 
with the state of affairs.” 

“ Do you mean that Eleanor is to be married, and that 
she has told Rodney Haslett about it ? ” said Milly slowly, 
as if endeavoring to adjust a complicated suggestion to her 
comprehension. “ I know they have seen a good deal of 
each other lately, but I thought there might be — a reason — 
for that.” 

“ The best of reasons,” said Helen gayly. “ Come, 
Milly, own up ? They will make a fine looking couple, 
surely, though she is so extremely peculiar, and might be 
his — aunt.” 

A shocking thrill shot through Milly, followed by a 
strange sensation, as if all the blood in her body had sud- 
denly rushed upon her heart, and congealed there. She 
lifted a pair of icy, entreating hands. “ Tell me what you 
mean, Helen,” she said, faintly. “ I truly do not know.” 

There were fibers astir in Helen just now which made 
her sorry for even Milly. Her keen eyes softened, though 
they did not waver. “ I do not see how that is possible, 
Milly, but, since you say so, — I mean that Miss Reese is 
engaged to Mr. Haslett.” 

With a wild throb the blood rushed back into Milly’s 
face and hands. The enormity of this statement gave the 
lie to it, and changed her paralysis of terror into the vigor 
of resistance, now that she heard it in hard words. 

“ I do not believe it ! ” she cried, facing Helen, her head 
thrown back and her soft eyes flashing. 


200 


A S *C0MM ON MORTALS. 


Helen’s lost their momentary kindness. “ As you 
please,” she said, “ only that does not alter the fact, — 
unfortunately, I should say, from your manner of receiving 
the news. Mamma and I met Miss Reese this morning, and 
as we had just heard of it through a friend of ours who 
knows Amy Haslett, we offered our congratulations, and 
she accepted them.” 

Milly was white to the lips when her cousin had finished 
speaking, but her look never faltered. She reached for her 
little walking-hat and fastened it on with trembling fingers, 
then thrust her arms hurriedly into her jacket. “ I must 
go out,” she said, in a high, hard tone. “ I must leave you. 
You will find mamma — ” she stopped, a sudden contraction 
of the throat impeding utterance. 

Her mother called after her as she heard the familiar step 
go swiftly down the stairs, but Milly did not answer. The 
cold, damp air that struck her cheeks as she stepped out 
into the street filled her with sudden exultation. She rushed 
down the steps and sped on her way. People turned to 
look with wonder at the tall figure that flashed by them 
with desperate rapidity, but the face wore an expression of 
nothing more than determined haste. Oh, to annihilate all 
the many blocks that lay between her and Eleanor; to 
burst into the sweet woman’s presence and see her rise in 
her noble beauty and give the lie to those words ! Eleanor 
was her friend, her friend ! The hurrying feet brought her 
to her goal at last. She dashed past the servant who 
opened the door for her, and rushed up to the room where 
she felt sure of finding Eleanor. 

They were face to face at last. Eleanor started to her 
feet as Milly entered, a deep crimson flush flooding her fair 
face from brow to throat. There was no chance for wel- 
come or inquiry, useless alike, she knew, for the pent-up 
words broke from Milly’s lips in a convicting cry, “It is 


NEWS. 


201 


not true ! They lie when they say you are to marry Rod- 
ney Haslett. Tell me so, Eleanor, Eleanor ! " 

“ Milly — ” began Eleanor, her rich voice trembling, as 
did her fine figure. Milly brushed the deprecating word 
away with an imperious wave of her hand. 

“ Tell me ! ” she said, in a voice that shook her. 

“ If I tell you I shall hurt you," faltered Eleanor, with 
rising tears. 

Milly’s face changed, like that of a child beneath a cruel 
blow from a hand which has hitherto only been raised to 
caress it. She stood quite still, her eyes widening as if she 
saw a dread and unknown form approaching. She looked 
so white and gentle that Eleanor’s heart smote her anew. 

“ I’m afraid I have hurt you,” she said, and burst into 
futile tears. 

“ Why do you mind — now ? ” whispered Milly. 

“ I never meant to ! ” sobbed Eleanor, eagerly, relieved 
by that faint sound. “ And I have not really injured you^ 
Milly, for since it would not have been you, it might as well 
be me, so far as you are concerned. It has all been so sud- 
den, and I could not tell you. But it would not have been 
right to sacrifice the happiness of two lives for the sake of 
one, especially when the sacrifice would have been in vain, 
because he did not — Oh, if you love him, you ought to know 
how hard it would be to resist him, hardest of all when he 
asked me to become — ” She stopped, at the imperative 
entreaty of Milly’s lifted hand. 

“ I hope we shall always be friends,” she said, after a 
minute, bursting out into fresh sobs. 

Milly looked around the familiar room where she had so 
often come to tell her simple little love story. Some months 
had passed since last she had been seated there, leaning her 
head against Eleanor’s knee, while she repeated the cher- 
ished sayings of the man she loved. It seemed like yester- 




202 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


day now, and quick as lightning came the darting recollec- 
tion that on that day, and in many of those last confidential 
talks, Eleanor’s hand had not strayed according to its wont 
among the great waves of splendid hair that crowned the 
little head with glory, but had rested passively in her lap. 
She remembered now what she had never consciously per- 
ceived, that her fluttering hopes had long since ceased to 
be sustained by Eleanor’s buoyant confidence in the happy 
result of the romance — when had it vanished ? Why had 
she never known ? Her eyes met Eleanor’s as she finished 
her quiet survey. 

The vein of commonness in Miss Reese’s nature was 
only a thread, but it started to the surface now. She had 
been watching Milly anxiously above her handkerchief, 
feeling a rising desire to justify herself. Milly ’s allegiance 
had been dear to her as a tribute to conscious worth. She 
was stirred to a vague resentment by the mute, pathetic 
criticism of that half-comprehending look. 

“ It is not right for you to hate me, Milly,” she said. 
“ I did not let myself become consciously interested 
until I knew beyond a doubt that there was no hope for 
you. And then — in my place could you have done any 
other thing than I have done ? ” 

“ Yes ! ” said Milly. 

Eleanor started toward her that she might speak with the 
powerful aid of proximity, but that warning hand checked 
her, as Milly turned and left her. 

Eleanor heard the door close after her, and rushed to the 
window for another look at the vanishing figure. Then she 
flung herself into a chair and broke into sobs. What 
woman who has lived to be thirty-five years old and has 
never, since the days of half-understood, soon-dissolved 
betrothal, heard the words of love, will blame her that now, 
in the full maturity of emotion and beauty, she should yield 


NE WS. 


203 


to the wooing of a notably fascinating and brilliant man ? 
What was Milly but a child, who had half of Eleanor's life- 
time yet before her in which to learn of love ? Even had 
she tried to win Haslett away from the girl, had she not a 
right, who had so long hungered for appreciation, to take 
what came in her way, even though it was a robbery of one 
who had not lived long enough to feel the needs this man 
awakened in her ? What is the sentimental regard of 
eighteen beside the ripe affection of thirty-five ? And 
what, thought she, quite simply and honestly, had Milly to 
offer him in comparison with the gifts of intellect and beauty 
which she could bring ? 

And Eleanor had not tried. She had at first enjoyed 
talking about Haslett more than she could understand. 
This man, whom she had seen grow up from boyhood, and 
greeted through the years with careless kindness, was sud- 
denly presented to her in a new light ; that at once of experi- 
enced lover and ripe man of the world. In seeking to find 
the embodied forms of the different mental phases which 
poor Eleanor thought so remarkable and so unique, and 
which were, in truth, so drearily commonplace, she had met 
no man like Rodney Haslett. She had a great, though 
patronizing, respect for Milly’s intelligence, and had readily 
fallen into regarding him with Milly’s consecrating eyes. 
Something of the sad wistfulness of an uncourted woman 
had fallen upon her life as his devotion to her young friend 
deepened, and she began to wish that she herself had not 
so anxiously put aside the name and custom of young lady- 
hood in order to rank herself with mature thinkers. She 
was scarcely less of a child than Milly herself in these mat- 
ters, and she hardly understood at first why those evenings 
when Haslett had walked home alone with her had come to 
count for so much in her existence. She had quite hon- 
estly sympathized with Milly in her happy dream, and hoped 


204 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


for a blissful waking for her, and, with sincerely friendly 
intention, had spoken with meaning of her to Haslett at 
last. His answer rather startled her. Could it be that Milly, 
with characteristic exaggeration, had colored his words 
more deeply than his intention warranted ? Had the poor 
child been self-deceived, and was it her duty, as a friend, 
to warn her of the possibility ? 

From this Eleanor shrank, with the natural repulsion of 
a kind heart from the necessity of giving pain. She 
endeavored persistently to make up her mind to tell Milly 
that perhaps she had been mistaken ; that Mr. Haslett had 
a manner which was — quite unconsciously on his part — 
misleading. By the time she had made up her mind, there 
were other reasons to keep her shyly silent. Why Eleanor 
did not apply to her own case the reasons which she found 
for believing Milly to be living in the glamour of a false 
hope, will not appear a difficult question to most women. 
What one of them all believes that the man of her preference 
has ever assumed precisely the same attitude toward another 
that he assumes toward herself ? It is one of the cases in 
which “ like causes produce different effects.” 

And indeed, Haslett had not left much room for doubt in 
this instance. With a disposition to atone at once and for all 
for his too dilatory and wavering decisions in other matters, 
he had brought that triumph of pure reason, his wooing of 
Miss Reese, to an abrupt and satisfactory conclusion. If 
there was any lack in his emotion there was none in his 
manner, and, had there been, Eleanor, thoroughly unversed 
in these subtleties, would never have detected it. She had 
ventured to say, with a little cold shadow of regret stealing 
over the radiant content of her new position: “ But I 
thought — we all thought it was Milly.” 

“ Well,” said Haslett, with perfect frankness, “ I thought 
it was Milly myself at one time. She is an extremely fasci- 


NEWS. 


205 


nating child, and I had very nearly asked her to mitigate the 
woes which await me in the future. But ” — and he smiled 
sunnily on his betrothed— 1 “ when one is past thirty, one 
waits until the judgment gives a verdict in favor of the 
election of the heart. There was no rest in her nature. I 
could not with her have attained the tranquil happiness 
which must be the medium for all successful effort in 
life.” 

He saw a blush of gratification illuminate Miss Reese’s 
face at this tribute to her superior charms, and added : 
“ You should be the last to condemn my apparent fickleness, 
Eleanor, since you were the cause of it. Yet not the cause 
seriously considered. How could your little friend and I 
discern our unsuitability to each other without spending a 
certain amount of time together? I was attracted; I admit 
it. But it was only attraction, and never deepened into the 
final coercion of love.” 

And Eleanor was satisfied. She was not an acute person, 
and the shrewdest might have been forced to agree with 
Haslett, who believed in himself as he spoke; was deter- 
mined in inconsciousness of falsity, and therefore true — for 
the moment. And indeed Haslett was always true, for the 
time being. He reasoned himself into perfect mental 
agreement with his chosen course of action, and if 
he was not always consistent, does not our national sage 
assure us that a foolish consistency is the bugbear of little 
minds ? And Haslett had not a little mind, though an 
uncharmed enemy had once said of his mental equipment 
that it was a small mind in a very active state. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


POOR MILLY. 

L IKE a hunted thing, wide-eyed, dry-lipped, tense of 
quivering muscle, Milly hastened through the unfriendly 
streets. She was conscious only of one over-mastering 
desire, to get home, to get back again to her own little cor- 
ner in the big world, and look in secret at this wound 
which she. dared not yet uncover. As she neared 
the house, a darting memory arrested her. Helen would be 
there, Helen, with the eyes that did not falter as they read 
the stricken face too cruelly well. She could not fly to her 
place of refuge yet. So, feverishly, deliriously, the suffer- 
ing child speeded on her way, threading in and out of long 
blocks, taking a curious cognizance of their brown-stone 
uniformity or brick irregularity. In and out, up and down, 
round and about, she swept on with a fierce determination 
in her fleet step, never once slackening into the listless walk 
of one, who, resigned at last to inevitable grief, and sick at 
heart, wanders drearily with the uncertain step and vague 
intention that tells of a broken purpose. 

On and on, and the afternoon shadows grew long and 
low, and slanting bars of rosy sunlight shot through the 
upper windows of the dreary houses. Milly saw and noted 
the glow of delicious color that gave to dull Goverick a 
transitory beauty, but for once it suggested to her only the 
time of day. Helen would be leaving soon. A little later ; 
she must be sure. More streets to be traveled, labyrin- 
thine, bewildering, like those threaded in the dire confusion 


POOR MILLY . 


207 


of a distressing dream. The glow faded, and far up in the 
violet arch over-head glimmered a faint star ; then another 
— another. 

“ I will go home ! ” said Milly, as these points of light 
met her uplifted eyes. How far away she was ! But home 
was reached at last. She darted up the steps and the inner 
stairs, when the door was opened for her, and flung herself, 
face downward, on the bed in her own room, the familiar 
aspect of which struck her like a shock as she entered. 
She lay there in the old, old attitude of prostrate woe, 
prone, hiding her face from her sorrow as from a visible 
presence; turning it away in despair from an unnoting 
heaven. So we all of us turn at some time in our lives 
face downward, bent toward the earth from which we sprang, 
to which we go; the hard, unkindly, fruitful earth. She 
could not think; she only felt that friend and lover were 
lost to her. Well, life was ended. She started up in 
terror. So soon ! Before she had known happiness love 
had said his last word to her. Before she had put her hand 
to the plow it was rendered powerless for all worthy effort 
by this untimely blow. What did it all mean ? It was not, 
could not, be true. She would waken to find it all a dread- 
ful dream, but now, while yet in the grasp of this unreal 
anguish, would some one, something , help her ? She turned 
her face up then, and clasping her weak little hands, called 
on God in her pain. She could not endure it all alone. 
But a new horror fell on her. Where was the fatherly deity 
whom she had once approached with childish trust? Where 
the divine brother of the race ? These had been stolen 
from her also, and she had not known. She reached out 
into a void. There was nothing left in all the empty world. 
Yes, something, Milly, that stands when creeds are shat- 
tered and love is flown. Stern nature has her manifesta- 
tions of ineffable tenderness. Underneath her stole the 


208 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


everlasting arms of mother — love. That fountain of life 
was not dry for her. She felt herself drawn upon that 
refuge for broken hearts, her mother’s breast, and the 
tears still mercifully possible to her young grief, burst 
forth like rain. 

“ Mamma, mamma, mamma ! ” she cried, like the child 
she was. Kisses and answering tears were warm on her 
face. Helen had told her news to her aunt, and the mother, 
who had long since read the story of her child’s love, and 
to whose simple codes no course seemed possible save the 
passive one of awaiting developments, was only less hardly 
stricken than she. 

“Don’t, don’t, my darling,” she said at last. “ Mamma 
can’t bear to see you suffer so ! ” 

“ Mamma, mamma, mamma ! ” 

“ I know, I know, baby ! ” 

“ It is not true, oh, not true, mamma ! ” 

“ I fear so, my own.” 

“ And must I go on living in this same world ? ” 

“ Oh, my lamb, don’t ! I can’t bear it.” 

“ How can I bear it ? ” demanded Milly, starting away 
from the tender arms, her eyes bright as with fever. “ You 
see, you never had any thing like this to bear, mamma. Your 
life, your usefulness, were not spoiled just as you were 
beginning to live. I said — I used to say to myself that I 
could be happy, no matter what became of me, if only hap- 
piness came to him. But it is not .true, not true, not true ! 
I want him for my own, and I thought he was, and— oh, 
Eleanor ! I put my life in her hands, and see what she has 
done with it.” 

“ I hate her ! ” said the mild mother, her face drawn with 
that bitterest of all anguish which looks helpless on the 
misery of the dearest one. 

“ She took him away from me. How could she ? How 


POOR MILL Y. 


209 


did she ? He never loved her — never. I was angry with 
him because he placed too low a value on her. Are you 
sure — ” the tense vehemence of Milly’s voice suddenly 
dropped to wistful entreaty — “ Are you sure there is no mis- 
take ? No, no ! ” the waves of passion breaking over her 
again. “ I know there is none. I have seen her.” 

“ What did you say to her, Milly ? ” asked Mrs. Barron, 
in a low voice. 

“ I asked her if it was true, and she told me that it was.” 

“ How could she ? ” cried the mother. 

“ If she could do it, why could she not tell me of it ? 
Mamma, see, I have lost everything : the God I believed in, 
the friend I trusted, the man I loved.” 

“ Hush, hush, my child ! ” 

“ There, go,” said Milly, throwing herself back again in 
the old attitude of despair. “ You have helped me, and I 
need not hurt you, mamma. You are all I’ve got left, you 
and papa. I want to be alone. I shall be alone all my 
life, and I may as well get used to it now.” She writhed as 
she spoke. 

“ Do you want to send your mother away from you in 
your trouble ?” asked Mrs. Barron, in a trembling voice. 

“ No, no, dear. Not away from me ; never away from 
me ; but out of the sight of what you can’t help. I am 
best alone.” 

The mother went. 

“ You who keep account 
Of crisis and transition in this life, 

Set down the first time nature says plain ' no * 

To some 4 yes ’ in you, and walks over you 
In gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin 
By singing with the birds, and running fast 
With June days, hand in hand ; but once for all, 

The birds must sing against us, and the Sun 
Strike down upon us like a friend’s sword caught 


210 


A 5 COMMON. MOR TA L S. 


By an enemy to slay us, while we read 
The dear name on the blade which bites at us ! 

That’s bitter and convincing. After that 
We seldom doubt that something in the large 
Smooth order of creation, though no more 
Than haply a man’s footstep has gone wrong.” 

But it is not easy to accept as our own the common lot. 
Who of us forgets that first terrible day when the bright, 
dominating confidence in life as a joyful affair was dashed 
to atoms ? The hour when calamity, hitherto regarded as a 
mysterious dispensation of Providence, useful for the 
chastening of others, but possessing no possible relation 
to our own life, suddenly confronts us as a long-abiding 
guest, whom no unrecognition will daunt, and who says to us 
with grim power of conviction: “ You also are mine ! ” 
Milly had been almost morbidly aware of the concerted 
anguish of a suffering world, but, with the unconscious 
egotism which leads us all in youth to make mental excep- 
tions of ourselves, she had assumed toward it the attitude 
of one who stoops to comfort, and who has no share in the 
common fate. Her mission was to succor, not to endure, 
she had thought, and now, her weapons of faith in God and 
man wrested from her; she stood defenseless beneath a rain 
of blows. There was wonder in the eyes, tearless once 
more, that were turned out into the dim light of the dark- 
ening room. Annoyances, small troubles, petty cares and 
minor griefs — Milly had had her share of these, but that she 
should find herself robbed and destitute in the realms of 
love, bankrupt in every form of faith, how could her untried 
soul realize this ? There were moments when blinding 
flashes of recognition came upon her, and moans and stifled- 
cries shuddered out on the darkness, but, the paroxysm 
passed, she lay, nerveless and gentle, thinking of the bows 
on that grenadine gown, of Helen’s new hat, of the silence 


POOR MILL V. 


2 1 1 


that seemed to have fallen on the house, of a hundred 
indifferent things. 

After a little she heard the approaching clink of plates 
and glasses on a tray, that we all know so well, as we lie in 
sickness or sorrow, passively alive to every sound that draws 
near the door that shuts us in from the world. The step of 
one impeded by an awkward burden came slowly up the 
stairs. She started up in alarm lest her mother should have 
sent a servant to look on her in this black hour. But it was 
her father’s figure that stood over her in the dimness. 

“ I’ve brought you some dinner, Milly,” he said, gently. 

She raised herself on her arm. “ Oh, papa ! Why did 
you ? ” 

“ I could not let anyone else do it, daughter.” 

“ I can not eat,” she said, letting herself fall back again 
listlessly. 

“ Do you want to break my heart, Milly? ” asked Mr. 
Barron, his sensitive voice broken and jarred. 

His first feeling when his weeping wife had come to him 
with the dolorous little tale, had been that of the angry irri- 
tation with which the best of fathers receive the intelligence 
that the cherished daughter is in love. Her marriage may 
be calmly discussed, but when the idea of her sentimental 
passion for another man is dwelt on, that most delicate of 
all romantic affections, a father’s half-chivalrous, half-jealous 
adoration of his maiden daughter, is jarred upon. It seems 
too coarse a thing that his guarded treasure, his flower, 
sprung from earth, but suggesting only heaven, should be 
stirred by the mingled love of mortals for a man, gross, 
imperfect, like himself. 

Milly had been the embodied dream of her father’s later 
years, as well as his petted baby, for in her blossoming 
youth he saw the promise of all that, for himself, he had 
lost He shrunk with violent repugnance from the thought 


212 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


of that bright image, blurred, marred, victimized by human 
passion. He sat in moody silence, with no word of com- 
fort for the wife who stood beside him. That sacred 
delight of his being, his love for his child, was mysteriously 
spoiled. 

But, as he sat there, in the stillness floated down the 
sound of a smothered sob. He started, raised his head, and 
the pale look of indignant distaste faded from his eyes as a 
vision came before him. Back went his memory to a night, 
many years ago, when he had walked the floor of a narrow 
room in the narrow house where this one unfaded flow T er 
of his married love had bloomed into life, holding the child 
in his tired arms. The little head, thickly covered with 
rings of deep gold, had lain against his shoulder. The 
sweet red mouth was open. The eyes were covered by the 
blue-veined lids. But the fair cheeks were crimson with 
fever, and the little hands fluttered ceaselessly in the uneasy 
sleep. A moan, such as that he had just heard, stole up to 
him, and, as he bowed his haggard face upon that of the 
sick child he had said: “ If she can only be left to us, Mary, 
I’ll laugh at every other blow of fate.” She had been left — for 
this ? When she had recovered, she would always leave the 
faithful mother to come to him. She would strike her still 
feeble little hands together at the sight of him, and the first 
word she had spoken in the world had been “ papa.” 

He turned his streaming eyes to his patient wife. 

“ I’ll go to her, Mary,” he said. “ I’ll take her some- 
thing to eat so that she won’t think I came to see ” 

Well, the mothers have a hard time of it in this world ! 
We grieve at the sight of their tears, but none the less bring 
our burdens to weigh down the hearts beside which our own 
began to beat. But when we see the fathers, the half- 
feared, wholly-loved oracles of the home, suffering with 
impatient masculine misery, and suffering for us, we choke 


POOR MILL V, 213 

back the anguish. Wait until we are alone with mother 
once more. 

Milly sat up and smiled. 

“You must not break your heart when mine is not 
broken, papa,” she said in her tender voice. “ I have had 
to learn that — people — are not so good as I thought them. 
I am glad the knowledge has come so early. I shall know 
what to do now. Don’t look like that, dear, darling papa. 
I can bear any thing, if you will love me always.” 

“ You are the core of my heart, Millicent.” 

“ And you of mine, papa. All my life has grown up 
around my love for you. That came first, and every thing 
else that came later is less a part of me. You must not 
mind so much when things — vex me. Do you remember 
how angry you were when PJelen broke my sled one wi ter, 
years ago ? Parents must learn to see their children’s toys 
broken. This— will be forgotten — like the rest. Papa,” 
with a sudden note of terror, “ if you cry it will kill me ! 
No, I will not eat any dinner here. We will take it down 
to the dining-room. I will eat it there. I’m all the family 
you and mamma have ; we can’t afford to have one vacant 
chair at that table ; there are not enough. What, do you 
want to carry me as you did when this planet was young ? 
What a foolish boy for your years ! I am almost as large 
as you are. Dear papa, darling papa, I can bear it. I 
truly can.” 


CHAPTER XX. 


AN ACQUAINTANCE RENEWED. 


A ND she did, for a time. Had her father remained with 
her to demand the constant expression of her love, which 
was half-adoring, half-pitying, through her discernment of 
the unfulfilled purpose of his life, she might have weathered 
this cruel blast. But he was suddenly summoned to Eng- 
land on important business. It was to be a flying trip, on 
which he must embark immediately with no time for prepa- 
ration for anyone but himself, even had he been able to 
afford the expense of taking Milly and her mother with him. 

“ It's a thing I can’t miss,” he said to his wife, as they 
were discussing it in the turmoil of hasty packing. “ I 
would be glad of it, except for Milly. I can’t bear to leave 
the child. Yet she seems to be bearing it beautifully.” 
The mother said nothing. She distrusted that beautiful 
bearing. 

Mr. White came in that evening. 

“ Glad you’re going, Mark,” he said heartily. “ It’ll do 
you good.” 

“ I should be glad of the chance myself if it were not for 
Mary and Milly. I hate to leave them alone here.” 

“ Don’t do it then. Send them to us. It does Lou good 
to have company around, and Milly and Kitty will make a 
nice little team.” 

Mrs. Barron’s face presented a doubtful reflection of the 
pleasure awakened in her husband’s by this proposition. 
The idea was both welcome and unwelcome. For herself 


AN A CQ UAINTANCE RENE WED. 2 1 5 

it would be delightful to be with the sister whom she sin- 
cerely loved, the brother-in-law whom she liked, and the 
niece who was her especial pet during the dreary time of 
Mark’s absence. Yet was it fair to Milly to remove her in 
this crisis from the shelter of her own home ? And would 
not Milly dislike with unreasonable violence the refuge indi- 
cated ? It was among the minor griefs of Mrs. Barron’s 
gentle life that Milly did not “ get on ” with her Aunt Lucy. 
Yet she dreaded the time when, the necessity for self-con- 
trol withdrawn, no longer stimulated to intense effort by 
her father’s presence, Milly should give way to the grief 
with which she now contended for each moment of time. 
And into what morbid state might the poor child not fall 
when only the two lonely women were left of the household, 
so small that not one could be spared ? She decided to 
leave the decision to Milly, who was now entering the room 
with a step too markedly sprightly to be that of youth’s 
natural lightness. There was not a vestige of color in her 
face, but her eyes were brighter than ever. 

“ Come here, Milly,” said Mr. White, affectionately. 
« You don’t look well, my dear. Ah, well ! we’ll soon cure 
you up at our house. What do you say to a two months’ 
frolic with Kitty ? ” 

The appealing look of alarm in Milly's face suddenly died 
into an expression of gentle curiosity as she met her father’s 
anxious gaze. 

“ Uncle Joe wants you and mamma to stay with him while 
I am away, daughter,” said Mr. Barron, in a tone which 
betrayed his longing that the invitation should find favor in 
her sight. 

“ Do you want to go, mamma ? ” asked Milly simply. 

“ I leave it to you, dear. I think papa would feel easier 
to leave us there than alone here. But it shall be as you 
say.” 


2l6 


AS COMMON MORTALS, 


“And Milly isn’t going to say any thing disagreeable,” 
said Mr. White, encouragingly. “ She won’t pay us the 
poor compliment of saying that no company at all is better 
company than ours.” 

Milly’s grief at the short separation from her father had 
been mitigated to the point of relief by the thought that at 
last she could meet this trouble in open conflict, no longer 
hiding the very sight of strife. She could let herself sink 
as far down as this burden would carry her. She did not 
care how low that might be. She wanted to rest from the 
struggle. And now to be forced from her retirement into 
that kind, hospitable, yet, in the inner sense, unfriendly 
home ! But another glance at the pale, eager face of her 
father decided her. 

“ You are always so kind, Uncle Joe,” she said. “Of 
course I will go if you all think it the best plan.” 

“ That’s right ! ” said Mr. White, cordially. “ We’ll pack 
your father off in fine style, carry you and your mother up 
to our house, and then you and Kitty and I will make Rome 
howl. See if we don’t ! We’ll lead you into all sorts of 
dissipation, and the mammas shan’t hinder us.” 

So it was settled. Twenty-four hours later the Barron 
house was closed, the servants sent off on a two months’ 
vacation and half pay, Mr. Barron afloat on the ocean wave, 
and Mrs. Barron and Milly installed in the guest room of 
Mr. White’s house. 

Then followed days of dreariness, which made the first 
stormy hours of grief sweet in retrospect, days when Milly 
realized that kindness without sympathy is like bread with- 
out salt. It may sustain life, but it is flat to the taste. The 
utter absence of any congenial element in her surroundings 
brought to her an aspect of her loss never discerned until 
now. She had loved Haslett passionately, unthinkingly, 
with an absolute abandonment of her own interests. In 


A N A CQ UA IN TA N CE RE NE IVED. 


217 


her feeling for him there had been no thought of self. But it 
came now, bringing bitterness with it. All the worth of a 
wider life which would have been hers through union with a 
man who had won for himself the large advantages of cul- 
ture ; all the independence of a married woman, no longer at 
the mercy of home traditions, came before her. It was only 
a drop in the bucket, but the bucket was full to overflowing. 

The Whites knew that Milly had had a “ disappointment,” 
it not being considered right in the Harris family to indulge 
in the luxury of uncommunicated woe, and were kind to her 
according to their various natures. Mr. White was boister- 
ously good-humored to her, and showered bon-bons and 
theater-tickets upon her in a substantial rain. He went to 
much trouble, good man, in order to discover plays that 
would not, as he expressed it, harrow up her poor little feel- 
ings. He displayed a quaint ingenuity in finding out from 
the more practiced theater-goers among his acquaintance 
the characteristics of the various dramas then being enacted 
on Goverick boards, and arrived at the conclusion that, as 
ministers to minds diseased, Messrs. Harrigan and Hart 
were unrivaled. 

Mrs. White saw that Milly and her mother lacked noth- 
ing in the way of comfort, and was honestly sorry for, if a 
little disgusted with, her sentimental niece. She disap- 
proved of all extravagant emotion, and occasionally 
remarked upon the morbid indelicacy of such sinful repin- 
ing, but, on the whole, was gentler than Milly had expect- 
ed. Kitty was all that is sweet and tender, but was a little 
awed by this romantic affection which had befallen her dan- 
gerous cousin. There was just enough of her mother’s 
starch in her gracious nature to stiffen her into a pretty 
primness, and she was disposed to regard this sorrow, and 
indeed, Milly herself, as something to which the tribute of 
a modest blush must be paid when mentioned. 


2l8 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Mrs. Barron was so entirely one with her daughter in 
this trouble that she was but a reflection of Milly’s woe, 
and, sweet and precious as her sympathy was to the bruised 
heart, it lacked the bracing quality. 

Colorless days, wakeful nights, a monotonous round of 
unimportant employments, all dully distasteful, — when 
would it all end ? Only once did Milly rouse herself. She 
had been listlessly walking through the streets, trying to 
obey her mother’s distressed command that she should think 
a little of her health, when, face to face at a familiar corner 
she met Miss Reese. The faint color brought by the cool, 
damp air to Milly’s cheeks, fled instantly. The pink in 
Eleanor’s deepened as if it had found refuge there. She 
lifted her head a little haughtily, but the glance of her eyes 
held something of pleading. Without a word Milly passed 
on. When she reached her temporary home, she shut 
herself up alone in her room for a long time. Her mother 
listened anxiously at the door, and was reassured after a 
long season of silence, by hearing the sound of a pen 
scratching rapidly over paper. When Milly came out she 
held a letter in her hand. 

“ Who is your letter from ? ” asked Mrs. Barron, gently. 

“ It is from myself to Eleanor,” answered Milly, briefly. 
When, seeing her mother’s wondering face, she held it out, 
asking indifferently, “ Would you like to read it ? ” 

Mrs. Barron took it and read : 

“ Dear Eleanor : Please do not think there is any anger 
laid away in my heart for you. If I did not greet you 
to-day it was because I could not trust myself to speak. I 
want you to know that I believe you. I know that you 
made no effort to take from me what was really never mine. 

It came to you. You had a right to it. I should have 
taken it if it came to me. If, when you are married, your 


AN A C QUA IN TA NCE RENE WED. 2 1 9 

husband ever speaks of me to you as one who may have 
suffered, tell him for me that it was not his fault, nor yours. 
He knows that now, and I want him some day to know 
that I know it too. It would be useless for me to assume a 
light pride which I do not feel, and say that there has been 
no pain for me in this. You would not believe in it. There 
has been, there is. You who love him can guess what it 
must be. But I may come some day to be glad of the min- 
istry of pain, and I have never yet been sorry that I have 
known you or him. You opened a larger life to me, and in 
my inmost heart I believe that you never meant to wrong 
or be careless of me. This is what I think in my best 
moments, and I am bold enough to believe that it is my 
real self which speaks then. 

I hope you may be very happy together, and I know you 
will hope that I may learn to be happy alone. God bless 
you, dear Eleanor, and forgive me for some bitter thoughts 
that I have known. My affection for you will survive the 
friendship that must be broken, and I want you always to 
think of me as 

“ Your loving 

“ Milly.” 

Mrs. Barron burst into angry sobs. “ Milly, you shall 
not send that letter ! ” she said. 

“ I’ve fought it all out with myself, mamma,” said Milly, 
spiritlessly. “ Please don’t make me enter into a conflict 
with you. It must be sent. I ought to send it.” 

“ When she has injured you so ? ” 

“ She never meant to injure me, and I do not believe that 
she did. He never cared for me.” 

“ Even so, you would never have treated her in such a 
way ! ” 

“ Eleanor and I are very unlike. I have no reason to 


220 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


suppose that my way would be better in its ultimate result 
just because it would have been different. And 1 am 
certain she has never felt so like a fiend as I have at 
times. 

“ Don’t let me become utterly lost and wicked. If you 
ever pitied me, mamma, pity me now and let me have my 
way. My sense of right is almost gone. Let me act in 
accordance with the little that is left, lest that should go 
too.” 

Mrs. Barron gave up the letter in bitter silence, quelling 
the tender fury which made her angry with the girl for 
whose sake it was roused. 

After that Milly sank into a state so nearly lethargic, that 
her mother longed for a return of the painful, nervous 
susceptibility which had distressed her during the first days 
of her stay at her uncle’s home. She spent hours in mo- 
tionless brooding, and it was with extreme difficulty that her 
mother could persuade her to leave the dull room for which 
she seemed to long as a refuge. 

Mrs. Barron longed for any break. The break came. 
One day Milly returned from that enforced and hated daily 
walk with something of the old glow and life about her. 
Her mother rejoiced, but did not question her, and the 
words soon bubbled up to Milly’s lips in the breathless, 
impetuous fashion of other days. 

“ I’ve met Mrs. Hyland, mamma ! ” 

“ Mrs. Hyland, dear ? ” 

“ Yes. You must remember about her. She is that 
wonderful woman who spoke in Melpomene Hall about a 
year ago. I met her at Mr. Archer’s house once or 
twice.” 

“ The medium ! ” 

“ Yes.” Milly’s lips tightened as if in preparation for a 
war of words. “ Don’t you remember that I told you about 


AN ACQUAINTANCE RENEWED. 


221 


a scheme that she and Dr. Balland were endeavoring to 
carry out ? ” * 

“ Something about some sort of an institution, wasn’t 
it ? ” 

“ Yes. I was coming home in a Warrington Avenue car, 
and she got on at Jackson Street. She recognized me 
immediately and told me all about the present result of 
the plan. They have succeeded in carrying out their enter- 
prise. They have a house up in Vermont, and several 
patients, and — oh mamma ! she wants me to go there with 
her — for a month at least.” 

“ Do you want to go, Milly ? ” 

“ I hate to leave you, but, mamma, can’t you see that my 
heart is breaking ? I can be of no use to you or anyone 
here. You would be happy with Aunt Lucy if my doleful 
self did not spoil every thing. You have a stock of mem- 
ories in common with my aunt. She is your sister. You 
love her. tut I feel myself growing wicked and hating 
them all. I hate their narrow personalities, their unin- 
formed worldliness, their absolute unconscious selfishness, 
which ignores any thing outside the limited circle of their 
acquaintance. Only a strong person can remain uncor- 
rupted among such petty individualities, and I am so weak 
now ! I hate Uncle Jo’s jokes, and Aunt Lucy’s maxims, 
and — Heaven forgive me ! — Kitty’s sweet, silly little 
speeches. I am so bruised and beaten and sore, and these 
tiny annoyances prick me so intolerably. And that is not 
the worst of it. I’m not the girl I once was. My selfish 
sorrow has rendered me cold and callous to all that once 
moved my best sympathies. I shall get like Aunt Lucy, 
only worse, for if my conscience is larger than hers, it has 
not half the consistency. And her unshaken religious 
belief will keep a flickering sense of human brotherhood 
alive in her, though she does not know it. But that has 


222 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


gone from me with all the rest. Let me go where I can 
breathe better air, mamma. One can be nothing but nar- 
rowly personal here. Let me go where large ideas are like 
daily bread, where I shall learn that my little lot is no 
more in the grand scheme of things than that of a sparrow. 
Then perhaps I can take heart again and be taught to do 
a sparrow’s work in helping to rid one city-street of nox- 
ious insects.” Miliy’s clasped hands were eloquent as she 
spoke. 

As she had crouched dismally in a corner seat of a street- 
car that afternoon, looking with sick eyes on the ugly 
streets, a face, charged with meaning for her, had suddenly 
flashed on her sight. Immediately she knew it for that of 
the mysterious dark-eyed woman, who had spoken of strange 
things with convincing assurance. Mrs. Hyland knew her 
also, having the invaluable gift to one in public life of 
remembering and associating names and faces. She 
greeted Milly with lady-like self-possession and seated her- 
self beside the girl. 

“You have had trouble,” she said with quiet directness, 
after a few moments of desultory and unimportant conver- 
sation. 

“ Yes,” replied Milly, as directly. Mrs. Hyland noticed 
the saddened face. A less shrewd observer would have 
read the nature of the trouble there. 

“ It was better that it should have come — this grief 
— than that you should have won unworthy joy,” she said. 
“ My dear, he would have made you happy beneath the 
tide-mark of your soul.” 

“ I can not think that,” said Milly, unresenting. She 
was at no time overpowered with that sense of personal 
dignity which is on the alert to repel liberties, and would 
have felt ordinary social methods to be unavailing in the 
presence of this melancholy sibyl. She only looked up 


AN ACQ C/A IN TA NCE RENE WED. 


223 


with helpless, undisguised pain in her eyes. Of course, 
Mrs. Hyland had her mysterious means of knowing all 
about it. There was no use in dissembling. 

“ Come,” said Mrs. Hyland. “Come with me. There is 
a road to peace if you will only take it.” 

“ I will go anywhere to be rid of myself.” 

“ Did you know that Dr. Balland and I had been partially 
successful in the scheme to which he referred on the first 
occasion of my speaking in Goverick ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ We have been so fortunate. We have secured a house 
in a lovely country, up among the hills of Vermont. We 
have -several patients suffering from moral and physical 
troubles, who are greatly improving under our treatment. 
I wish I could count you among them.” 

“ I wish you could.” 

“ And why not ? Could you not spend a month with us ? 
I am returning in a few days and would be so glad to take 
you with me.” 

Miily sat still and thought. The old impersonal desires 
stirred within her. Here was a chance to rise above the 
unworthy limitations of her grief ; to feel her enfeebled 
pulses beat once more in unison with the mighty heart of 
the world. She had been a traitor, unconsciously, but still 
a traitor. She had suffered her own fortunes to absorb her 
interest and dominate her life. What clew to this puzzling 
universe might be held by this sad-eyed, enlightened 
woman ? Could she help her to find the right channel for 
the old, imperiled enthusiasm ? A pang at the thought of 
leaving her mother ; a sharper one at the recollection that 
her presence of late had brought nothing but sorrow to 
that sweet soul — then she looked at Mrs. Hyland with 
dawning consent in her eyes. 

“ I will go gladly, if I can arrange it. “ Will it — will it be 


224 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


a very expensive matter ? ” Poor Milly ! Even salvation 
(on new and improved principles) was not free, and the 
necessity for capital seemed to lay ut the root of emancipa- 
tion from human need. 

“ Our sanatorium must be self-supporting,” said Mrs. 
Hyland. “ We charge twenty-five dollars a week to each 
person for board and treatment. We hope in time to have 
it liberally endowed, and then we shall ask only a nominal 
price from those of certified character. At present, this is 
the best we can do.” 

Milly meditated. ** I will see you again, Mrs. Hyland,” 
she said, at last. ' “ I must consult my mother. Papa is in 
England now, but mamma can speak for both.” 

" And your friend, Miss Reese,” said Mrs. Hyland, rather 
eagerly, “ will she not wish to join you in sharing the 
privileges of our home ? ” 

Milly flushed crimson. “ I think not,” she said. “ She 
will be otherwise engaged.” 

“ Yes ? ” said Mrs. Hyland, with interest. “ Has she 
found a definite plan of work which would be incompatible 
with a short sojourn with us ? I believe we could greatly 
aid her in her undertaking, whatever it may be.” 

“ She has found a definite plan of work. I think it would 
be incompatible with any absence from her home just now. 
She is to be married soon.” 

“ Ah,” said Mrs. Hyland, with a slight blankness as of 
disappointment creeping over her face, “ that explains why 
she has left my last two letters unanswered.” 

She appeared to devote some moments to a mental 
re-adjustment of plans which had become disarranged 
through the discovery of an unconsidered factor and then 
turned to Milly with a sudden question. 

“ Is he one of us ? ” 

‘‘Of ? ” 


AN ACQUA IN TA NCE RENE WED . 


225 


“ Of those who are working out the new truth in the new 
light." 

“ He is not a spiritualist," said Milly. 

“ Opposed to it ? " 

“ Yes, I think so,” reluctantly. 

“ An able man ? " 

“ Very ! " 

“ That is not what I expected of Miss Reese," said Mrs. 
Hyland, thoughtfully. “ I always believed that she would 
marry some simple, matter-of-fact soul, who would accept 
her as an embodied gospel, and aid her with the plodding 
acquiescence which these plain people sometimes give to 
ideas which are quite beyond them.” 

“ He is not at all like that, said Milly, quietly. 

“ He will destroy all her usefulness then." 

“ It may be so," said Milly, remembering the gradual 
coercion of her own views to Haslett’s standpoint, and feel- 
ing even now in her violent revulsion from his teachings, 
that he still exercised a mental domination over her, mak- 
ing her submission to Mrs. Hyland’s influence an effort. 

“ Do you like him ? Are you satisfied for her ? " asked 
Mrs. Hyland. 

“ Yes," replied Milly, in a tone that told the whole 
story. 

Mrs. Hyland laid a gentle hand on the trembling one 
nearest her. “ There are better things in store for you,” 
she said. They exchanged addresses and parted. 


CHAPTER XXI. 


a mother’s weakness. 

I T is needless to say that Milly accompanied Mrs. Hyland 
on her return to the moral sanatorium up in Vermont. 
She had had a contest of more than usual fervor with her 
mother, but it had reached the usual conclusion of these 
contests between the mother and daughter. Mrs. Barron 
was acquiescent, and Milly triumphant. Armed with her 
mother’s consent Milly met the loudly-expressed indigna- 
tion of Mr. White and the silent disapproval of his wife 
with undisturbed serenity. Mrs. Barron was a curiously 
unworldly person, and in her innocent, restricted life had 
met with few persons who were entitled to her distrust. 
She was a variation from the family type, which, lacking 
the protective power of knowledge of the world, supplied 
the social need by a wide suspicion of motives. This, 
equally with over-credulity, is liable to be victimized by 
deception, but it is an undeniable safe-guard to narrow 
natures from whom the teaching of experience has been 
withheld. It is not a lovable trait, and is rarely found in 
company with what common consent has pronounced to be 
the result of the higher qualities in human nature ; but it 
can not be denied that Mrs. Barron’s difference from the 
Harrises in this respect was rather deplorable in the 
absence of a more extended knowledge. 

Her friends had, for the most part, been of the same simple 
God-fearing type as herself. She had always given fair deal- 
ing, and she expected it. Her objection to her daughter’s new 


A MOTHER'S WEAKNESS . 


227 


departure was not founded on any idea of the peril in thus 
sending her ewe lamb among people of whom she knew 
nothing save that they were “ peculiar,” but on her distaste 
for any thing which arose out of Milly’s ill-starred friend- 
ship for Miss Reese. 

She was guilty of a little mild duplicity in concealing 
from Mr. and Mrs. White that the founders of the 
sanatorium were professors of spiritualism, for she was 
perfectly aware that their opposition to the plan would find 
in this fact the strongest rock on which to base itself. 
Her one idea in life, since she had listened, forgetting her 
maternal pams, to Miily’s first cry, had been to get for the 
child all that she wanted. To her sister and brother-in-law 
she said that Milly was not well, a self-evident fact ; and 
that she had heard of a remedial institute in charge of friends 
of Miss Reese, where she thought Milly would be benefited. 

“ I say that the best place for a sick girl is by her 
mother’s side ! ” stormed Uncle Jo. “ I shall write to 
Mark about it.” 

“ You won’t have time, Josiah ; Mrs. Hyland starts the 
day after to-morrow. And Mark would agree with me if 
you could communicate with him.” 

“ I’ 11 cable ! ” 

“ How could you* explain matters in that way ? I know 
he would think just as I do about it.” 

“ No such thing ! He’d never give in to having Milly 
go up at this time of year to some bleak hole in New 
England, to stay in a house that is a cross between a board- 
ing-house and a hospital. The child is crazy and so are 
you.” 

“ I wouldn’t say any thing more about it, Josiah,” inter- 
posed Mrs. White. 

“ I would ! ” said Mr. White, less under control than usual. 
“ I thank the Lord my Kitty hasn’t got any notions ; but 


2 2 & 


AS COMMON' MORTALS. 


if she had I* d soon cure her of them. Haven’t we dorv^ 
all we could for Milly ? I know the child isn’t happy. 
She’s had her little heartache ” — Uncle Jo’s voice softened 
unconsciously — “ but who hasn’t ? It goes easier with 
one, like all the other complaints, when it comes early. 
And she was getting over it nicely, when she had to meet 
this fool of a woman who has just upset her again, and 
who cares a darned sight more for her twenty-five dollars a 
week than she does for the poor child’s health. 1 suppose 
that is natural enough if her bread and butter is concerned, 
but it’s plain enough that her interest in Milly isn’t dis- 
interested. You are always talking about expense, Mary. 
1 shouldn’t think you would feel like throwing away a 
hundred dollars, to say nothing of the cost of the journey.” 

“ Milly is going to use the hundred dollars that her Aunt 
Millicent gave her. She said she would not take any ot 
her papa’s money for this unexpected expense,” said Mrs. 
Barron, quickly. 

“ More fool she ! To fritter away the money that was to 
help her to remember her father’s only sister is nothing less 
than wicked. And all for the sake of this wild-goose 
chase ! I suppose you know all about these people, 
Mary ? ” 

“ They are — that is, Miss Reese knows them.” 

“ Miss Reese knows some pretty queer birds. That’s 
one thing against them. Where did Milly meet this Hy- 
land woman ? I never heard of her.” 

“ She met her at Mr. Archer’s.” 

“ Who is Mr. Archer ? One of those Melpomene Hall 
people ?” 

“ Yes, but he is a very nice man, and his wife is a good, 
motherly soul. They live very well, too, up in St. 
Mathew’s Place.” 

“ James L. Archer, is it ? ” 


A MOTHER'S WEAKNESS. 229 

" Yes, I believe so.” 

“ Oh, then I know the man. Sells carpets when he isn’t 
seeing after his soul. He is a good deal of a fool, but a 
decent fellow at bottom, and not such a bad man of busi- 
ness as you’d think if you heard him talk about spiritual 
correspondences. But I must look Mrs. Hyland up else- 
where. Archer’s geese are all swans, and I’d never get at 
the real state of the case through him.” 

“ I think when I am satisfied you might be, Josiah,” said 
Mrs. Barron, with dignity. She secretly dreaded the result 
of these investigations, which were sure to be colored by 
Mr. White’s unreasonable tendency to be prejudiced against 
any thing which was indorsed by Milly. 

That gentleman gave a little contemptuous grunt, which 
had nevertheless a little note of tenderness in it. He 
had small respect for Mary’s judgment, but perhaps 
liked her all the better for that feminine incapacity for 
understanding the real nature of facts. His Lucy was the 
only woman living who could indulge in possession of a 
“ clear little head of her own ” without cooling off the 
womanly warmth of her heart. 

As it happened, the grim determination with which Mr. 
White stalked off to bed — if any thing so round and com- 
fortable can be said to stalk — did not suffice to enable him 
to rise the next morning. He was confined a prisoner for 
that day and the next by a sharp attack of rheumatic gout. 
He was too bewildered by the physical pain, which he 
always bore very ill, to think much about Milly's affairs or 
give them the promised “ looking into.” He was scarcely 
conscious of the farewell kiss she gave him, as she leaned 
over the couch where he writhed in impatient misery, and 
Aunt Lucy would have seen Milly walk over the edge of 
a precipice sooner than break in upon her unfailing policy 
of non-interference. 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


230 

Mrs. Barron attended to Milly’s packing ; the girl’s own 
part in the preparation chiefly consisting in the building of 
one of those forlorn little bonfires, in which, from the begin- 
ning of time, sad, foolish women have burned up the visible 
tokens of a dead hope. She collected all the mementoes of 
her year of love with hands that were like ice as they 
touched the pitiful trifles. The last thing to be laid on the 
sacrificial pile was a photograph of Haslett, which he had 
given her six months before. It was one of those striking 
pictures which catch the most characteristic of the poses 
and expressions of the original, and fix certain unmistak- 
able individualisms in perpetuity. It was Haslett’s very self 
that looked out from the bit of paste-board. The sun had 
caught the gentle, cynical flash of the eye ; the full, delicate 
curves of the mouth, with their lurking suggestion of placid 
cruelty ; the haughty, meditative carriage of the fine head. 
As Milly looked, with knitted brows and burning eyes, the 
rich coloring of the original seemed to flood the blacks and 
whites and grays of the photograph, and beat there in 
vivid life. How utterly she had loved him ! How utterly 
she had lost him ! And even this sign of him must 
be given up ; her childish sense of honor told her 
that she had no right to it, since she looked on it 
with eyes that had grown wider through the wasting 
of hopeless love. He belonged to Eleanor. Since 
her sight was what it was, she must not keep even his 
shadow in it. So she laid it, the beautiful, beloved thing 
on the flame that was blazing up, fed by all those hoarded 
treasures. She watched the cruel fire as it curled around 
the edges of the picture, eating its way to the serene, dis- 
dainful face. Then it flared into sudden fury, then glowed 
and smoldered and flickered to dying points of light 
against the blackness, and sunk into gray ashes, having 
devoured all she had. She turned away from the little 


A MOTHER'S WEAKNESS. 


* 3 * 

heap of ruin with a bitter cry that would have wrung her 
mother’s heart had she heard it. 

“ It is well that I am goingaway,” she said to Mrs. Bar- 
ron an hour later. “ If I stayed here ! 

She thought this more strongly that night. She went to 
bed early, consumed with fever. Long after midnight she 
started into wakefulness from an uneasy sleep, and tossed 
restlessly from side to side, until something arrested her 
fruitlessly closed eyes, as if they had been open to meeting 
objects. 

She saw, with a distinctness that defied her own con- 
temptuous argument, an odd picture shape itself before her 
on the darkness. It was nothing more than a long green 
grave, grassy and sunlit, on which danced, holding her 
beautiful arms aloft in a tumult of grace and glee, a ballet- 
girl, clad all in rosy tissue, with long stockings and low bod- 
ice of deepest black. 

While Milly looked, wondering, grave and girl vanished, 
and serene against a leafy background of clustering trees, 
stood the marble image of a goddess. It was Diana, fair, 
chaste, glistening in sculptured loveliness. But the eyes 
that looked out from the carven face were human eyes of 
bright, living, flashing blue. They glanced down to the 
bow in her hand, then gazed intently before her. Shimmer- 
ing sunbeams chased each other through the thicket of 
deep green leaves, in a mad race to look on the white beauty 
of the deified nymph. The green light of a summer wood- 
land was over all. 

Suddenly it faded, darkened, and before the divine face 
of stone lit by the human eyes, drifted a mist, which lifted 
at last to show only a dreary waste of sullen waters. As 
Milly watched the dark waves, an awful shape drifted 
slowly across them. Towers, minarets, peaks and pillars of 
ice were clustered in an uncouth, majestic pile. Like a 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


i 3 i 

rude cathedral it rose, with strange green shadows lurking ! 
in the ghostly aisles. Milly shivered with cold as she | 
looked down the unearthly nave, and saw, set against the 
end, frozen beneath countless layers of transparent ice, the 
face of a man, vast, serene, changeless. A snowy beard 
swept down from his sealed lips, and was lost in the white- 
ness about him. The eyes were closed in an ineffable 
repose, deeper than sleep, sadder than death. The hoary 
hair was pressed down on the broad brow by a bronze wreath 
of thickly set laurel-leaves. Bearing its silent monarch, the 
iceberg drifted out of sight. A light glimmered on the 
waters ; they ceased to shift and roll, and slowly settled 
into a wide stretch of shining sand. 

Against the crimson light of the horizon rose the massive 
pillars of an Egyptian temple. Doves whirled above it, and 
circled with flashing wings through the rainless air. 
Through the open vista of the mighty columns might be 
discerned in the distance, the solemn shape of the Sphinx, 
mute in eternal waiting. Within the porch was set an 
altar, tortured into strange beauty by a cunning chisel. 
This bore a casket of beaten gold, so crusted with gems 
that its yellow gleam could scarcely break through the 
tumult of their varied color. And, winding across an end- 
less plain, came a ceaseless stream of people, young and 
old, strong and feeble, of every age and every clime, black, 
white and red. They passed, one by one, up the steps of 
the temple, and approaching the altar, fell prostrate before 
the glittering casket in worship of a mysterious divine 
treasure within it. To bow before that hidden image of 
deity they had made each a weary pilgrimage ; hoping, 
believing, trembling, they had reached the goal at last. 
And Milly’s heart stood still with pain as she saw that the 
casket was empty. 

“ The treasure is in the feeling that has brought 


A MOTHER'S WEAKNESS . 


233 


them ! ” she cried, starting up as the sad, splendid vision 
faded. 

It broke the spell of her waking dream. The strain of 
Harris’ common sense, though in abeyance, was present in 
Milly after all. “ It is time I went ! ” she said, sitting up 
straight and stiff, in the darkness. “ These fever-dreams 
might last too long one day and then — ” 

It was time for a change of some sort, undoubtedly, but 
as Milly clung to her mother at parting, hot tears blinded 
her, and a premonitory pang of homesickness shot through 
her. She was conscious of a vague fear, and a sudden 
realization of the safe shelter of this dull home made her 
tremble with foreboding. But she could not go back ; she 
had put her hand to the plow. Preparation for worthy 
work awaited her. So, with a final embrace for her mother, 
a fond look at the ugly house grown suddenly almost 
beautiful in her eyes, Milly put her hand in that of Mrs. 
Hyland, and was led forth to the new life in which she 
hoped to find her best self again. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


AMONG THE CHOSEN. 

A LONG, low house, painted a dingy yellow, shadowed 
by dripping eaves ; a shrouded circle of solemn hills ; 
a still, steady fall of chill rain. Peering out between the 
flapping, wet, leather curtains of the square-topped wagon 
that had brought Mrs. Hyland and herself up from the 
wretched little station, this was what Milly saw. 

It was April, a shivering, thinly clad New England April. 
The boughs of the trees were almost naked, and seemed to 
be trying to draw their few tiny green leaflets, their sole 
protection from the unkindly storm, closer about them for 
warmth. 

Dreary woods in mournful masses broke the monotony of 
the desolate, brown landscape. Great fields ruined with rock 
lay on either side of the long stretch of wet, winding road. 
The ghostly mountains looked out ever and anon from their 
cloak of mist, but quickly veiled their august faces again 
from the somber scene. 

Milly stepped down from the springless, jolting wagon 
aided by Mrs. Hyland’s hand, and walked, with a sinking 
heart, up the wet gravel path that led to the main door of 
the house. Within was a narrow hall covered with a black 
and white oil-cloth, the disagreeable odor of which was 
mingled with a strong smell of kerosene, though the lamps 
were unlighted. 

“ Just step in here,” said Mrs. Hyland, indicating a small 


AMONG THE CHOSEN. 


235 


square room at the left. “ I can’t imagine where Dr. Bal- 
land is.” 

Milly sat down on a trying, cane-seated chair, and looked 
about the blank, unornamented room. A thought of the 
cheery, cozy little parlor in Harbach Street brought a sud- 
den, constricting pain into her throat. She dared not dwell 
on that dear deserted home. She suffered her imagination 
to wander to the big stiff sitting-room at Uncle Joe’s, with 
its hideous, expensive, comfortable chairs and sofas, and 
the bright fire that, late as it was, still crackled gayly in the 
burnished grate. Her mother and Aunt Lucy would be sit- 
ting by the center table now, the firelight falling on their 
calm faces. Perhaps there might be a shade of sadness 
over the placidity of mamma’s now, and — oh, Milly hoped 
not — a tinge of redin the eye-lids. Uncle Joe would be 
reading his rustling paper and making important little com- 
ments on the news of the day. Kitty would be seated close 
against the window to catch the fading light on her inevit- 
able needle-work. The dear father, far across the water, 
would be thinking of her as warm and dull and safe among 
them all. What had she done ? What should she do in this 
strange, bare, cold place ? Milly all at once felt like a 
homesick baby. Her love for Haslett and humanity was 
temporarily obscured by a longing for the old despised 
comfort and security. If she could only go back. 

But Mrs. Hyland was entering with Dr. Balland, and the 
tears, born of fatigue and forlornness must be choked back. 
The doctor came forward with his usual elaborate and 
difficult politeness. 

“ Delighted to see you,” he said, in a would-be society 
tone, then, with a sudden change to platform impressive- 
ness, “ we welcome you to our home. Healing and work 
await you. Peace be with you.” 

Milly could only answer by a sobbing gasp of mental and 


236 


AS COM MO X MORTALS . 


physical exhaustion. “ She is worn out,” said Mrs. Hyland, 
apologetically. “ The soul in her is not yet independent 
of the body. Come, my dear, I will show you your room.” 

Up a flight of stairs, along a dreary length of matted 
hall, Milly wearily followed her conductress until she 
stopped before a numbered door. It was quite dark by this 
time, and Mrs. Hyland struck a spluttering, ill-smelling 
match and applied it to a tallow candle in a worn tin candle- 
stick. A dreary light was flung over the room they entered. 
It was matted like the hall, and furnished with a mean bed, 
a chair, a wash-stand, and six square inches of defective 
looking-glass in a dismal black frame. On the wash-stand, 
next the soap-dish, lay two tracts which announced them- 
selves in a larger text than that indicating the subject, to be 
the work of Dr. Balland. 

“ Your trunk will be brought up as soon as we can spare 
our man to go to the station. He is not a very strong 
man ; he serves us for the sake of the board and treatment, 
and he is apt to be slow. Can you prepare yourself for 
the evening meal without waiting for your luggage ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Milly faintly. 

“ Then I will leave you. I will tap at your door in a 
few minutes, and take you down with me.” 

The door closed after her. Milly, with an effort, lifted 
the heavy stone ewer and poured water into the basin. 
She drew off her gloves and hat, and dipped her face into 
the water. It was not a pleasant experience. The water 
smelt distinctly of a neglected cistern. She hastily dried 
her face, and then weakly brushed at her dusty dress with the 
towel. She let it drop in a nerveless fashion after a while, 
and sat down, pushing the wet rings of hair back from her 
brow, and resting her head on her hand. She had never 
been away from her mother before in her life. She forgot 
that she was a disappointed woman, who had come hither to 


AMONG THE CHOSEN. 


237 


turn her misdirected love into the broad channel of univer- 
sal benevolence. She only felt very young and forlorn and 
miserably, desperately homesick. After a little while Mrs. 
Hyland tapped on the door. 

“ All ready ? ” she said, with a weird smile that was never 
hearty in spite of praiseworthy intentions. She glanced at 
Milly’s woe-begone face, and a look of real womanly kind- 
ness gave a humanizing softness to her unearthly counte- 
nance. 

“ Come,” she said, slipping her arm through Milly’s, 
“ you will feel better when you have had some supper.” 

She led the way down the flight of steep stairs that 
seemed interminable to Milly’s tired feet, and through a 
labyrinth of passages, until a glare of sickly light, the nature 
of which was betrayed by an overpowering access of kero- 
sene in the air, guided them to the door of a room, long and 
low like the house. It was not a pleasant room. A couple 
of inferential china poodles stood on the mantel-piece, painted 
in a distant imitation of marble, equidistant from a wooden 
clock with a pale, unexpressive face. The windows were 
curtainless against the darkness, but some poor soul among 
the inmates had been led by a struggling sense of beauty 
and adornment to wreath the mean casements with the trail- 
ing green of ground pine. There were two long tables, 
one only being spread and surrounded. Dr. Balland sat at 
one end of this, and Mrs. Hyland slipped into the vacant 
chair at the other, motioning Milly to a seat beside her. 
All present waited in silence, until a tall, frightened-look- 
ing woman hastened in with a murmured apology 
for tardiness, and sank, in a tumult of trembling awkward- 
ness, into her place. Dr. Balland bowed gravely to the 
offender, then rose, spreading out his hands in a benedic- 
tory attitude. 

“For w r hat we are about to receive may influences of 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


238 

good make us truly thankful to man, who has tilled the 
waiting earth and brought forth its pleasant fruits.” 

Milly bowed her head according the the old, reverent 
home-custom, and these words struck her as rather fine, 
though she wondered even in her weariness, why all the 
new truths are so invariably set into old forms by even their 
most advanced advocates. 

She turned her attention at last to the pleasant fruits, 
which were offered to her by a serving maid who was in that 
advanced stage of consumption which is apparently the nor- 
mal condition of the New England rural poor. She was 
given the privilege of choice between wheaten-grits, oat- 
meal and hominy. Milly had a distaste which amounted to 
loathing for all forms of farinaceous food, and she declined 
these delicacies, one and all. The consumptive waitress 
looked disturbed, after a sodden, limp fashion. Animated 
by a sudden thought she proffered bread. Milly accepted 
it. It was very peculiar bread, she thought, and not as easy 
to lift, even in small quantities, as that to which she was 
accustomed. The butter was particularly unpleasant to the 
taste. She abandoned it in favor of some apple sauce of 
remarkable tartness, which she found in a saucer at the side 
of her plate. Dr. Balland’s voice arrested her in the pro- 
cess of spreading the acid preserve on the heavy bread. 

“You are not quite prepared to live hygienically, Miss 
Barron ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” answered Milly, flushing scarlet as all eyes 
were thus drawn upon her. “ I am not hungry to-night.” 

She was faint with hunger, but appetite had fled in the 
presence of the untempting viands. 

“ Something a little hearty will be good for you to-night,” 
said Mrs. Hyland, and the homely words had a pleasant 
sound, coming from her. She gave a direction to the dis- 
pirited maid, who vanished, and presently re-appeared at 


AMONG THE CHOSEN, 


2 39 


Milly’s elbow with a plate on which a preparation of canned 
corn steamed unwholesomely. Milly heroically ate a por- 
tion of it as an acknowledgment of the favor, though it was 
a vegetable unpleasant to her even in its unspoiled fresh- 
ness. She was quite ready to die, and felt it a symptom of 
unworthy sensuality that she should find any thing alarming 
in the prospect of slow starvation. At last overborne by 
weariness she begged to be excused. The excuse being 
granted, she rushed up to her own room, finding the way 
by a sorf of instinct. 

There she flung herself on the bed sobbing. 

“ Mamma, mamma, if I only had you with me I shouldn’t 
care if every one else deserted me.” 

Haslett was right. She was only a child after all. 

But in the morning things looked brighter, according to 
their wont in the eyes of youth ; they have not yet learned 
the terrible heaviness of waking daily to the familiar pres- 
ence of trouble, only briefly banished by kindly, hardly- 
courted sleep. It was a clear balmy spring-morning, the 
fickle season having decided suddenly in a fit of repentance 
for her yesterday’s ill-behavior, to act in her very prettiest 
manner for a little time. Milly looked out from her window 
to the majestic circle of violet hills, so serene and tender in 
their might in the radiance of pure morning light, that 
her troubled spirit was calmed and elevated. She was too 
entirely a product of centralization ever to become one of 
those blessed souls to whom nature is the best and surest 
minister. Her life, for its own happiness, must be passed 
among the haunts of men, with all their pleasures and per- 
ils, but she had a poet’s sensitiveness to all forms of beauty, 
and only a dullard could have missed the messages of those 
gentle slopes. 

“ I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my 
help,” she murmured in sober gladness, doing homage to 


240 


A S COM MO X MOR TA L S. 


the mountain majesty which seems to dwarf human sorrows 
with human shapes, and quiets an egotistic unrest unto 
shamed content. It was hard to turn from those great steps 
of beauty, mounting up toward heaven, but, with a sigh, 
she began her preparations for the day, her movements 
quickened by a dismal sound which apparently proceeded 
from the gong emeritus of a Hudson river steamboat. 

Milly found her way to the dining-room, where her fellow 
boarders and patients were already gathered, and sat down 
among them, returning the unctuous greeting of Dr. Bal- 
Jand, and the friendly one of Mrs. Hyland, with some cheer- 
fulness. She began to notice the faces of the guests with 
an attention which she had been incapable of giving to them 
the night before. There were ten women and three men 
present, not including herself, or the distinguished “ heads ” 
of the institution. All were middle-aged, with the excep- 
tion of three of the women and one of the men. This last 
she perceived to be a tall boy of eighteen or so, seemingly 
afflicted with hydrocephalus. He was on the border-land 
between imbecility and a human stupidity which experience 
had taught us to consider not at all abnormal. There was 
something pathetic in the way in which one of the older 
men, apparently his father, appealed to him on all matters, 
as if in determined ignoring of the mental and physical 
deficiencies of his unfortunate child. The piteous attempt 
at concealment was carried on with a sort of ghastly spright- 
liness, the poor father evidently believing that the others 
present were hood-winked into regarding his son as merely 
delicate in health by this sad, parental effort at decep- 
tion. He was one of those vague, dreary looking, elderly 
men, so indistinct in outline and coloring, that they give the 
impression of having been drawn on a slate and then par- 
tially rubbed out again. But Milly liked him as she heard 
him say to his neighbor, a little pinched, unmistakably sin- 


AMONG THE CHOSEN \ 


241 


gle lady — “ Mortimer and I like the idea, don't we, Morti- 
mer? We talked it over together last night, and if we 
didn’t just agree at first, he soon brought me around to see 
it in the light that he does.” 

The youth smiled vaguely, and kept his usually wander- 
ing eyes fixed on a small pitcher of syrup, which was being 
borne in the wake of the oat meal. The relations of things, 
so far as syrup and oat meal were concerned, were plainly 
understood by Mortimer. 

The other man was a long individual with hair, eyes and 
beard of intense blackness. He was exceedingly thin and 
sallow, and was consuming many crackers and stewed prunes 
with melancholy satisfaction. The youthful element among 
the women was represented by two sickly, lead-colored, 
dead-and-alive girls, in charge of a sickly, lead-colored, 
dead-and-alive mother, and a short, dark, bouncing woman 
of thirty or less, who gave the impression of being an eman- 
cipated school mistress. The faded mother of the faded 
girls, the patent spinster, and three dreary looking matrons 
were companioned in age by two women who were more 
remarkable in appearance. One was a rather pretty person 
whose hair would have been gray had not a preference for 
yellow, combined with an inability to afford a sufficient 
number of bottles of “ Auriferous Fluid ” rendered it a pale 
but decided green. Her movements were not devoid of a 
nervous grace, and her eyes, which were rather fine, she 
used with a full consciousness of that fact. 

The other lady was a tall, slender person of exceeding 
sweetness and refinement of countenance. The waves of 
soft white hair were turned back from a thin sensitive face, 
and the large brown eyes were full of a timid benevolence. 
She was attired in deep mourning, and Milly felt drawn to 
her by this visible sign of woe, as well as by the delicate 
attraction of her appearance. 


24 2 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


The breakfast was of the same order as the supper, but 
as Milly was allowed the indulgence of buttered toast and 
some tolerable coffee, she fared well enough. As she rose 
from the table she wondered a little about the probable 
order of the day, but her thoughts went, womanlike, to her 
unpacked trunk, and the morning was mentally disposed of. 

“ Do you wish to begin the treatment to-day, Miss Bar- 
ron, or will you wait and rest for a brief season ? " asked 
Dr. Balland. 

“ I think to-day must be utilized in resting and putting 
my affairs in order," answered Milly, feeling suddenly dis- 
inclined to the reception of any more new impressions. The 
morning passed with the quickness which is the accompa- 
niment of all trivial, monotonous employment, and after a 
terrible mid-day meal of many vegetables and cereals, with 
animal food represented by a leathery chop at Milly’s plate, 
she was begged by Mrs. Hyland to join the house party in 
a walk to the top of a neighboring hill, of course designated 
as Prospect Mountain. Milly found herself as they started 
out, in the company of the dark young woman who had 
impressed her as being but recently freed from the restraints 
of the instructor’s life. 

“ What may I call you ? " she asked, with her usual win- 
ning graciousness of manner, as this person announced her 
intention of taking charge of her during the ramble. 

“ Miss Bliss. Almira Bliss," was the answer. “ Your 
name is Barron, I believe." 

“Yes, Millicent Barron." 

“You are big enough," said Miss Bliss, surveying th* 
grand proportions of the splendid young figure with appa 
rent approval, “ but you look delicate for all that. Whai 
are you being treated for ?" 

“ I have not been very well lately," said Milly, coloring 
“ I think my nerves are not behaving as they should. I am 


AMONG THE CHOSEN. 


243 

tempted to ask you in return what treatment you can possi- 
bly require ? You look thoroughly healthy.” 

“ Oh, I'm all right physically. I thrive even on the green 
food they give one here. My trouble is moral.” 

“ Indeed,” said Milly, rather startled. 

“ Temper,” said Miss Bliss, shortly, prodding the point 
of her sun-umbrella emphatically into the yielding mud of 
the road. 

“ Oh,” said Milly, amused, “ I should think that must be 
uncomfortable, but at least it is not unusual.” 

“ Mine is,” said Miss Bliss, with a sullen pride in the dis- 
tinctive character of her affliction. “ I nearly killed a boy 
last winter.” 

“ A boy?" 

“ Yes, and an aggravating specimen of his abominable 
class he was too. I told them*they’d better keep me in the 
female department.” 

“ Told ?” 

“ The principals. I taught in a public school in Lyan- 
dot. I was a good teacher, too, though I wasn’t equal to 
any thing beyond the preparatory classes. My education is 
thorough, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far. I had 
had classes of small girls ever since I began teaching, and 
though I got vexed enough with them sometimes, I never 
could bear the thought of switching the little things. I 
was fond of some of them, too, and they liked me. It 
would all have been right if Mr. Harrison — the boys’ prin- 
cipal he was — hadn’t discovered that class three in the 
male preparatory department was suffering for a teacher 
with decision, and concluded that I could fill the long felt 
want. Well, I had decision, but I had something else too, 
that wasn’t on the list of requirements. I had temper. 
But you can’t care to hear about all this.” 

“ Yes indeed, I can and do,” said Milly, interested in the 


244 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


sturdy, vehement little woman and her volunteered history. 
“ Please go on.” 

“ Well, I said to them, when they told me of the intended 
change, ‘ Don’t put me in charge of those boys. I haven’t 
the disposition to stand it. I shall hurt some of them if I 
have to undergo what Miss Starr did with them.’ But 
Plarrison only laughed in his easy way, and said : 1 Non- 

sense, Miss Bliss. A lady who can control forty fretful 
girls can control herself.’ 

“ ‘ Girls aren’t like boys,’ I said. 4 They may irritate but 
they don’t infuriate. I am really not a safe person when I’m 
roused. See here, Mr. Harrison ; when I was five years old 
I chopped a finger off the hand of our hired man. He 
came out into the wood-shed where I was hacking away at 
a log with a small ax of my brother’s. 

“ ‘ “ Quit that,” he said. 

ili “ I won’t,” I said, and I was right enough, baby as I was, 
I wasn’t doing any harm ; but Hiram Withers was always a 
mean man to children. 

“ ‘ “ Oh, you won’t,” he said, sitting down on the log 
before me, and grinning up into my face. 

“ ‘ “ No, I won’t,” said I. 

“ 4 “ Go away, or I’ll chop you.” 

“ 4 44 Oh, you will, will you ?” he said, and never moved, but 
sat there with his hands spread out on the log on each side 
of him, jeering at me like a great clown. Then I felt one 
of my rages coming on, I knew £he symptoms even then, 
but I couldn’t help myself. I lifted the ax with all my 
little might and brought it down on his hand. It didn’t 
fall square, but it was a sharp ax, and I always was the 
strongest little thing, and Hiram Withers never had but 
nine fingers after that to the end of his days. That finger 
cost father a hundred dollars, which was more than 
Hiram’s whole body was worth, any day, and I was shut up 


AMONG THE CHOSEN , 


245 


in a dark room for two days on bread and water, and 
whipped when I went in and whipped when I came out. 
My temper isn’t any better now than it was then. My folks 
are all fond of me, but they can’t live with me. Father 
gave me as good an education as he could afford. We had 
clever teachers at our district school. I fought with them 
all, but they all taught me something. Then I had three 
years at the seminary in Massachusetts, when they gave me 
my diploma and were mighty glad to get rid of me. I 
taught girls in a school in Portmentor, and then I came 
here. I’ve never had more than a few sharp words with 
the girls since I’ve been here. Let me stay among them, 
and it will be all right for me and them. I’ve told you my 
story, and you can send me away if you like, but don't send 
me among those boys.’ 

“ Well, after all that, Harrison only laughed again. ‘ We 
won’t give you an ax to enforce your rules with,’ he said. 
‘ I’m not afraid of you, Miss Bliss, and if the boys are, so 
much the better.’ 

“ Well, I couldn’t bear to lose my situation and my salary, 
and I took the class. It makes me wild to remember it. I 
controlled myself into an apoplexy, almost. At last it 
came — the thing I expected and dreaded. And, from the 
day I took that class, I knew it would be Johnny Lawson — 
the most exasperating boy I ever saw or heard of. He’d 
been mocking me in an undertone while I read “ The Charge 
of the Light Brigade ” for an example to the boys. I 
never was much of a reader, and I knew it, and that made 
me mind it more. Of course I told him to stop, and he’d 
wait until I began to read again and then go at it once 
more. I kept getting more and more excited, and at last I 
laid down my book and cried “ charge,” when I meant to 
say “ silence.” The little rascal jumped up and rushed 
down the aisle to where two boys named Gunn were sitting. 


246 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


‘ You told me to charge to the Gunns,’ he said. All the 
boys laughed like so many fools, and I just charged after 
that child. I took him by his collar and shook him until I 
was tired, and then I flung him from me. He fell, and his 
head struck on the edge of a desk. 

“ I can’t tell you how I felt when I saw him lying there, 
looking as he did. My temper was gone as if I’d never 
had any. I lifted him in my arms and did all I could for 
him until a doctor could be got. The boy was sick for a long 
time ; the parents made a great fuss ; though I was never 
prosecuted, it got into the papers and I was discharged.” 

“ It was very unfortunate,” said Milly, kindly, but won- 
dering how this extremely practical, bad tempered, but 
honest-hearted country girl came to be set in the midst of 
this group of mystics. 

“ How did you hear of this place?” she asked, after a 
little silence, feeling the rudeness to be in some degree con- 
doned by the unsolicited frankness of Miss Bliss’s commu- 
nication. 

Miss Bliss plodded on gravely as she answered : “ I 

was always going about to lectures. I lived all alone in a 
little room that I’d hired in a respectable lodging house, 
and I did for myself; got my own meals and all that. I 
liked the life; it was independent. But I hadn’t any 
friends in Lyandot, for I didn’t take to any of the teachers 
in our school, and half the time I was just homesick for the 
country. The days weren’t so bad, for I was so busy. In 
the morning I had my tea and toast to fix and my room to 
straighten before I set off for school. I ate my lunch there, 
and I bought it, a bun and a cruller, as I went past a bakery. 
And I ordered my little dinner sent home from a grocery or 
butcher’s shop. I used to rest and read and sew after I got 
home in the afternoon until it was time to get my dinner. I 
had a nice little stove where I could broil steak or ham and 


AMONG THE CHOSEN. 


247 


fry potatoes and eggs, and I always had a pot of jam or pre- 
serves or a little fruit in the closet for dessert. It didn’t take 
me long to get my meal ready and eaten and cleared away, 
and the evenings were fearfully lonely. I always had taste 
for information, and so the winter lectures were a great 
resource. Sometimes I took a popular concert instead. 
When I went to listen to Dr. Balland and Mrs. Hyland it 
wasn’t as new to me as you’d think. Grandma was a clair- 
voyant, not professional of course. She was just an old 
Mohawk Valley Dutchwoman, but she had some wonderful 
visions and dreams. I never saw anyone get into better 
trance states than grandma did. Once, when we children 
were fooling with her we asked her to look into the bad 
place, you know. And she did. But she fell into a fit 
with fright, and would never tell us what she saw. We 
began to laugh when she came out of it, half from relief, 
but she grew so angry that she soon stopped us. 

“ ‘You may laugh, laugh, laugh, and you’ll go to hell laugh- 
ing.’ I can hear her say that now. The way she and mother 
and a cousin of ours could make tables travel around was a 
caution. And she had the ‘ Banner of Light ’ sent her now 
and then, though she was a Baptist in good and regular 
standing. So I was rather used to that sort of thing, and 
when I saw the meeting where Dr. Balland and Mrs. Hyland 
were to speak announced, I felt almost as if it was a friendly 
invitation. Have you ever listened to an inspirational 
speech from Mrs. Hyland ? " 

“ Yes,” said Milly, shuddering, “ it was terrible.” 

“ Ah, she has great powers, and the doctor has a gift of 
his own too. Well, that night he described all about this 
place, and the help it was going to be to those afflicted with 
moral diseases, and I said to myself : Now there, wouldn’t 
it be money in my pocket if I could get rid of this temper 
as I would of chills and fever ? I thought more about it 


248 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


when I came back to my room, the afternoon after I’d been 
told that my services wouldn’t be required any longer up 
at the hotel. I was too proud to go home, and I had more 
than a quarter of my salary saved and laid by. Here’s my 
chance, I said. I’ll go to that moral sanatorium for a while 
and be put in decent order and then I’ll try to earn my liv- 
ing again ; I didn’t want to be a burden on father’s hands, 
though he’s well-to-do enough. I I never could see why 
daughters shouldn’t look out for themselves as well as sons. 
I don’t suppose I could get a place in a school again, but I 
might take a position in a shop. I shouldn’t like it, but it’s 
better than becoming dependent all through my own fault. 
I never could understand how able-bodied women can endure 
to sit around at home and wait until some man comes along 
who thinks it’s a big compliment to a woman to ask her to earn 
her living in what I think is the hardest way on record for the 
sake of his society. I think any girl who has a fair consti- 
tution and education and enough character to take care of 
herself, who sacrifices a life of independence and quiet com- 
fort like mine to be housekeeper and child’s nurse and maid- 
of-all-work for some man, who in all probability isn’t half as 
smart as she is, is pretty much of a goose. Look at me ; I’m 
strong and well. I never had a pain or an ache in my life. 
I’ve had a good deal of fun in spite of the loneliness, and my 
nerves haven’t been destroyed by frets and worries. If I 
could only get this twist out of my temper I’d be perfectly 
happy. Now there were several girls in our village who 
married about the time I began teaching. You ought to see 
them now. Their hair and teeth and color and snap are gone. 
They’re limp and nervous and flat and unstrung. They’re 
kept awake all night by a chorus of babies, and on the jump 
all day by the cares of a house and perhaps a farm into the 
bargain, to say nothing of the endless wants of the children ; 
that work never ends, day or night, for when one of them is 


AMONG THE CHOSEN. 


249 


asleep the others aren’t. I say it doesn’t pay, and I believe 
it is the same in cities as it is in villages and the country, 
except among the wealthy ; and they are still in a small 
minority in spite of the newspaper talk about the growing 
prosperity of the country.” 

“ I think you forget one thing that is said to lighten the 
labor and conceal the care,” said Milly. “ There is love.” 

“ I don’t know any thing about love,” said Miss Bliss, 
soberly ; “ I won’t talk about it until I do. But you are 
altogether too good for this world if you think that love — 
the genuine article — is at the bottom of half the marriages of 
poor girls. They marry because they want to be support- 
ed, because they want to be taken off their own hands and 
settled in life. I suppose I’m human. If ever a man comes 
along whom I like so well that I can’t live without him — 
I’m sure I hope he won’t — I dare say I shall be fool enough 
to marry him if he is fool enough to ask me. But as I 
haven’t spent my life in expecting him or fostering feelings 
that call for an object instead of being awakened by one, I 
think I shall escape. And I’m sure it will be a mercy all 
around if I do, for no living man could stand my temper.” 

Does the appearance of this uncommonly sensible young 
woman among Dr. Balland’s patients seem improbable to the 
verge of impossibility ? Yet her presence there at that time 
can be vouched for. It is an indubitable fact that into the 
hardest heads peculiar doctrines, not unfrequently substanti- 
ated by personal experience, will find their way. Common 
sense no less than dreaming emotionalism has been known 
to indorse theories which the mass of mankind is disposed to 
ridicule. Old as faith and mystery is the figure of the plod- 
ding utilitarian following in the wake of the transfigured saint, 
racked with ecstasy. Before the jeweled shrine of the Madonna 
kneels a devotee, wasted by spiritual passion, rapt with a 
fasting vision of an opened heaven, reading in a tremulous 


250 


A S COMMON MO R TA L S. 


trance of bliss miraculous signs for earthly guidance in the 
revealed glory of the celestial world. And by his side is 
bent the sturdy peasant, telling his beads with stolid fidelity, 
offering candles to the mystical, resplendent Virgin, and 
waiting for the vision of his brother to pass, that he may 
catch the first waking words, and be guided by them in the 
purchase of a horse on the morrow. 

The ascent of the hill was becoming so steep that even 
the voluble flow of Miss Bliss’s narrative was checked by 
other occupation for the breath, and she and Milly toiled on 
for a little while in silence, the others still lagging behind. 

“ Stop here,” said Miss Bliss, when they were but a short 
distance from the top. “ I want you to listen to the echo. 
It’s worth it.” 

They paused, and, putting her hand to her mouth, the 
irascible little teacher sent a loud, melodious halloo. 

What a refinement of melody was the answering call. 
Milly listened, entranced. 

“ Please call again,” she said, when the last murmur died 
away. 

Miss Bliss surprised her by singing in a sweet contralto 
the last lines of the last verse of “When Sparrows Build.” 
Faint, tender, exquisitely clear, the mournful music was 
chanted back by the melodious ghost of sound. 

“ Ah,” said Milly, “ that must be the voice of some lovely 
lost spirit too fond of earth to enter heaven, and so com- 
pelled to dwell forever on these heights between them both, 
and answer in tones a little too low for the angels’ song, and 
a little too high for the speech of men, to the voices that 
come hither to greet her.” 

Miss Bliss looked at the absorbed face with a certain blunt 
admiration displayed in her own. 

“ That’s pretty,” she said. “ I guess temper isn’t among 
your troubles,” 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


DANGER. 

M ILLY found herself anticipating the “ treatment ” with 
some trepidation on the following morning, and was 
relieved when, in the bare parlor of the house and in the 
presence of the lady with the gray locks, the lady with the 
green locks, and Mrs. Hyland, she found herself placed in 
a chair and called upon to fix her eyes steadily on a silver 
dollar which Dr. Balland held before her. This very com- 
mon hypnotic experiment did not in the least alarm her, as 
she was already familiar with it, and in addition to that, a 
very obstinate “ subject ”. She gazed unwillingly at the 
burnished silver round, and at last confessed, with some 
mortification, when her own patience and that of the others 
was exhausted, that she had never been able to fall into the 
proper state of receptivity which is a necessary condition 
in the superinduction of trance. 

“ We must rely upon the atmosphere of this house to pre- 
pare the way for the reception of treatment and truth,” 
said Dr. Balland. “ We will make no further effort this 
morning. I shall ask you to read some pamphlets of mine, 
which I will give you in the afternoon, and this evening, if 
influences are propitious, we will hold a seance.” 

He took Millicent’s hand in his and held it firmly, seek- 
ing also to hold with his pale eyes the brown ones which 
flashed with an uncontrollable displeasure. He released her 
at once, and the aimless morning slipped away. Milly duti- 
fully spent the afternoon in reading the pamphlets, and was 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


2 52 

convinced anew of her unfitness for the reception of spirit- 
ual truth, since they not only conveyed no idea to her 
mind, but seemed to be arranged on principles of com- 
position entirely unfamiliar to her. She told this to Dr. 
Bailand in all simplicity, and his reception of the statement 
led her to fear that she had offended him. 

In the evening the entire group gathered in the ugly par- 
lor, and, after the lights had been carefully turned down, 
seated themselves in a circle, and, with clasped hands, 
awaited developments. Milly was given a place by Dr. 
Bailand, which she did not like as she felt the close clasp 
of his thick hand on her slender one. The silence was 
soon broken by a succession of raps and taps on ceiling, 
floor and doors. Milly was startled, but the others appeared 
to receive it as a matter of course. It was not long before 
the lady with the dyed locks burst into a disconnected 
speech, in which she dwelt on the necessity of the ministry 
of love in language so fervid that Milly wondered and was 
disquieted. The woman rocked wildly to and fro, and 
spoke with something of Mrs. Hyland’s manner, though with 
far less power. She sank back at last in apparent exhaus- 
tion, and the silence which followed was almost immedi- 
ately broken by the voice of the sweet-looking lady in 
black, who had so attracted Milly. She did not speak as 
the other had done, with closed eyes, but looked gravely 
and steadily before her. 

“ There is danger here," she said in her finished, exquis- 
ite voice. “ I have had warnings of a less determined 
character ever since my arrival here. I came, as some of 
you know, that I might be aided in carrying out my inten- 
tion of studying from every possible point of view the 
pyschical question of the day. I have called nothing com- 
mon or unclean. I have searched in the dark corners of 
private experience ; the darker ones of public pretension. I 


DANGER. 


253 


have become convinced that there is an unknown law of in- 
calculable value to mankind underlying these unexplained, 
but not, I firmly believe, inexplicable phenomena. But 
there is no clew to it to be found in this place ; there is 
nothing here for an experienced seeker, for an inexperi- 
enced one there is danger. My message to-night has been 
to announce the existence of this. It came to me. I am 
bound to deliver it. I trust I have given no offense, 
especially as this is my last word to you.” 

“ But, Mrs. Fotheringham,” cried Dr. Balland, speaking 
fast in the dim light, “ are you quite assured as to the trust- 
worthiness of the spirit who has warned you ? Consider. 
You can not wish to leave us, as your words would 
imply.” 

“ I am by no means convinced that my impression has 
been given me by a spirit. It is more probably the result 
of some unfamiliar law in my own nature. But my uncer- 
tainty as to the source does not extend to the reliability of 
my conviction. I shall leave you to-morrow.” She turned 
abruptly to Milly : “ Will you go with me, my dear ? ” 

“ I must insist ! ” struck in Dr. Balland, angrily. “ You 
have the freedom of your convictions, Mrs. Fotheringham, 
but I can not permit interference with my patients. The 
circle is dissolved. Any thing further that you have to say, 
madam, will, I trust, be said to me alone. I am perfectly 
well aware of the unfortunate obsession from which you 
suffer at times, and I can explain and relieve the spiritual 
trouble which you have been called upon to undergo this 
evening.” 

He hastily brightened the light, and, as he did so, Mrs. 
Hyland was discovered prone on the floor, hiding her face 
and stifling hysterical sobs. Dr. Balland bent over, speak- 
ing in a rapid whisper, to which she answered in gasping sen- 
tences, of which a broken phrase could now and then be 


254 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


caught. “ Let her go— it is not fit— just her age—” were 
among the words audible at intervals. 

The doctor knelt by her side, speaking a few short, stern 
words in her ear. She shuddered into silence, and he beck- 
oned to the first speaker of the evening. 

“ Take her away, Mrs. Branton. She has been strongly 
influenced, but is incapable of giving us a coherent com- 
munication.” 

Milly was pale and trembling. She drew near Miss 
Bliss, who looked reassuringly commonplace and sturdy 
and healthy. 

“ Oh, what do you think of that lady’s impression ? ” 
implored Milly. 

“ I don’t think much of it,” said Miss Bliss, cheerfully. 
“ It’s just as well she’s going away. She’s always been a dis- 
turbing element. What danger could there possibly be ? 
In case of fire we could all scuttle out of this low house 
easily enough. It wouldn’t hurt anyone seriously to jump 
from its highest window.” 

“ I don’t think she meant physical danger, exactly,” said 
Milly. 

“ I’m not afraid of any other kind,” said Miss Bliss, 
unmoved. 

Milly’s mind was weakened by the mental strain of the 
past months, but the lurking tinge of Harris shrewdness in 
her nature was given to occasional assertion, and it started 
to the surface now in confirmation of the probable relia- 
bility of Mrs. Fotheringham’s impression — which might 
possibly be explained on other than purely psychical 
grounds. The samples of “ board and treatment ” that 
had thus far been offered to Milly were gradually produc- 
ing on her an impression which could be traced to an 
entirely exoteric cause. She crept into bed that night, 
much excited by undefined fears. She trembled when 


DANGER. 


255 


footsteps in the hall neared her door, and started up at last 
in positive terror when a delicate but decided tap sounded 
on a panel of her door. 

“ Who is it ? ” she said, faintly. 

“Mrs. Fotheringham,” answered a gentle voice ; “may 
she come in ? ” 

Milly threw her dressing-gown about her and ran to the 
door, slipping back the bolt with nervous haste. She turned 
the knob, but the door resisted her efforts to open it. It 
was locked on the outside. 

“ Oh, what shall I do ? ” she cried, horror stricken, for 
from earliest childhood her dominating physical terror had 
been that of being shut in. A whipping had been joyfully 
chosen as the alternative from the unmolested privacy of a 
locked closet. 

“ Hush, hush ! nothing will harm you. I expected some- 
thing of the kind. It is only that I may not have access to 
you,” said Mrs. Fotheringham, soothingly. “ But I have 
provided against that. Good-night. 

There was a sound of something being slipped under the 
door, and Milly saw a white square outlined against the 
darkness of the matted floor. Shivering with excitement 
she pushed the bolt firmly back into place, and lighting a 
candle, read this, under the circumstances, extraordinary 
epistle : 

“ Dear Miss Barron : In speaking of the presence of 
danger in this house, I did not refer so decidedly to an im- 
mediate menace, as you may have been led to believe, 
though my impression did not exclude that possibility. I 
have only seen you for one day, but I am quite sure that 
you possess the sweet reasonableness which will not turn 
from a struggling truth because of one or even many damag- 
ing circumstances attendant on its painful working up into 


256 


AS COMM OAT MORTALS. 


light. Since I am conscious of arrogating to myself the 
position of adviser to a young woman who can have no pos- 
sible reason for trusting me more than those of whom I 
warn her, I feel that some explanation of my presence and 
position here is due to you. 

“ I have been a determined investigator of the theory, 
belief, religion, call it what you will, of spiritualism, for 
some years past. I was originally drawn toward a system 
which practically annihilates death by a desperate desire to 
repair the ravages made by the supreme human calamity in 
my life. I have long since passed from that narrow inter- 
est to one of impersonal intensity. I believe that a dis- 
covery than which there can be none of more importance 
to humanity is imminent, and I have wished to place myself 
where I may catch the first faint whispers of a voice which 
shall presently sound on the dull ears of a waiting world ; 
the supreme scientific revelation of the century. I have 
left no stone unturned ; I have remembered from what dim 
corners have bounded into the light of fame so many of 
our great discoverers. The America of science still awaits 
its Columbus. Who can tell what humble Genoa may claim 
him ? I have visited many strange places and seen and 
heard many strange things. I came here, notwithstanding 
my distrust for Dr. Balland, which does not extend to his 
undoubted psychical powers, hoping to catch the still 
elusive clew. It is not here. 

“ I believe the claims of this so-called sanatorium to be 
entirely fraudulent. You need not, however, so classify the 
character of the inmates. Mrs. Hyland, though completely 
dominated by Dr. Balland, is a person of far better moral 
endowment than he, and is, to a marked degree, what we 
must term for want of a better phrase, a medium. The 
others are, for the most part, honest people, though also for 
the most part of distorted views. I except Mrs. Branton, 


DANGER. 


257 


whose spiritual distortion is, I believe, that of thorough 
dishonesty. Miss Bliss is perhaps the most worthy person 
among our fellow-boarders, though she is a living refutation 
of the doctrine that common sense is the one essential 
ingredient in the forming of character. There are many 
occasions in life when uncommon sense is necessary. 

“ Your difference from the others is made especially notice- 
able by your extreme youth, and I beg that you will accom- 
pany me when I leave this place by the afternoon train 
to-morrow. I will see that you reach your own home 
safely. 

“ I offer honestly to serve you, but I should feel that ser- 
vice incomplete if I did not warn you against drawing too 
hasty a conclusion and forming an unworthy generalization 
from the disagreeable facts to which I have felt bound to 
draw your attention. Imposture exists no more truly here 
than truth elsewhere. There are charlatans in every walk 
of life. You will not conclude that all commerce is based 
on knavery because you have encountered dishonest trades- 
people. You will not condemn all society as corrupt 
because certain members of the social body are corrupted. 
I am the oldest woman in the house ; as such I would be of 
use to the youngest. Let me add that I would also be of 
use as Your friend, 

“Amabel Fotheringham.” 

The letter inclosed a card bearing the same name and 
with “ The Beresford, New York City,” engraved in the 
corner. Milly dropped card and letter in a sort of stupe- 
faction. She was far too young to realize the urgent need 
for expression which comes to us in later life when we have 
discovered that we have made no perceptible mark on our 
time, and that our opinions are not waited for with breath- 
less attention in the arrangement of human affairs. Do we 


258 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


not all remember one or two occasions in the course of our 
waning lives when we have been speaking fluently, much 
encouraged and thrilled by our own eloquence, to have seen 
our audience, composed of one gentleman in whom neither 
breeding nor endurance are warranted, rise suddenly and 
feign an immediate errand without, or perhaps with brutal 
indifference, omit even the pitiable courtesy of the feint ? 
When there seems to be no demand for our ideas, written 
or spoken, the supply is apt to become a drug in the market 
of consciousness. Ah, how we welcome that new person 
who is not cruelly informed of our small hobbies, who is 
not yet familiar with the unpleasant little smile with which 
our intimates are wont to greet our opening sentences. 

Mrs. Fotheringham had passed her life at a social alti- 
tude quite beyond Milly’s present conception, and, in that 
dainty world where the business of pleasure leaves no 
room for the pleasure of thought, had found few who could 
spare time to indulge her with one of the discussions where 
her charged soul could free itself. Even in what might be 
called an emergency she could not resist the delight of 
giving forth that which had come to represent the verities 
of life to her, to what she believed to be an answering intelli- 
gence. She would warn Milly faithfully, but the duty 
would become a pleasure if she could warn her in her own 
way. Added to this was a rather remarkable equity of 
mind which impelled her to justify an imperiled theory, 
though imperiled only in this instance in the thought of an 
insignificant girl, while she condemned its immediate 
practitioners. 

But poor Milly felt sick at heart. Her personal well- 
being was being continually threatened, to the exclusion of 
large ideas, it seemed. What was the use of throwing the 
windows of her soul “ wide open to the sun ” since that 
operation apparently afforded ingress to influences less 


DANGER. 


259 


potently beneficial than the sunshine. And in that moment 
the remembrance of the home habit of practical prepara- 
tion for impending evil, thrust itself upon her and nullified 
the fine effect of Mrs. Fotheringham’s conscientious letter. 
She was too much shaken by terror at the thought of that 
locked door to see that all the impersonal detail of the let- 
ter clustered after all around a very simple and practical 
plan for her escape from danger, if danger existed, and she 
lay, wide awake, trembling and tossing until morning. She 
fell into a troubled doze in the gray, early light, and woke 
with a violent start to find her room flooded with broad 
sunlight. Her first movement was toward her door. She 
slipped back the bolt and turned the knob. The door 
opened easily. She dressed, and with no defined resolution 
in her mind, went down the stairs. At the foot Miss Bliss 
met her. 

“ Mrs. Fotheringham needn’t have made all that fuss last 
night,” she said. She would have had to leave this morn- 
ing anyway. She received a telegram after midnight telling 
her that her only son is lying at the point of death. She 
left on the next train . 4 She left this for you.” 

She handed Milly a note. It merely said, “ You will 
learn of my trouble. He is the last one left. I have not 
even stopped to pack. I would not have left you for any 
thing less. I think you will have no trouble in following me 
at your earliest convenience.” 

Milly went into the dining-room, downcast, disturbed, 
pondering. 

’ “ I find I made an odd mistake last night, Miss Barron,” 
said Dr. Balland as she took her seat. “ I passed the hall 
closet on my way to bed and saw — as I supposed— the key 
in the door. I have some rather valuable manuscript on 
one of the shelves, and I usually keep the key in my pocket. 
I turned it in the lock, therefore, and took it away with me. 


260 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


When I went to the closet this morning I found the key in 
the door, though I held the one I had taken in my hand. 
On examination I find that it was the door of your room 
which is next the closet that I locked, and you have unwit- 
tingly been a prisoner during the night.” 

“ Not unwittingly,” said Milly, looking at him. “ I dis- 
covered that the door was locked. I was very much 
alarmed.” * 

“ I hope you discover now that your alarm was ground- 
less,” said the doctor, returning her look, intently. 

41 Your explanation is certainly calculated to allay my 
fears,” said Milly, with some amazement at her newly 
acquired skill in ambiguous expression. 

“ May I have a few moments’ conversation with you, Miss 
Barron ? ” said Dr. Balland, as they rose from the table. 

44 Certainly,” answered Milly, with a qualm. 

44 We will, if you please, discuss the matter in walking,” 
said he, stepping out on the broad piazza on which the din- 
ing-room opened, and beginning to pace up and down. 

“ Mrs. Fotheringham’s aberrations have alarmed you, I 
fear,” he said quietly. 

44 Yes,” said Milly, simply. 

“ Naturally enough. I feel it a matter of justice to 
myself, however, to say that at times she is not responsible 
for her words. Physicists would, no doubt, define her 
case as one of insanity. I, who take what I believe to be a 
more truly scientific view of the case, would pronounce it to 
be one of sporadic obsession. In fact, I have been treating 
her for susceptibility to this unrecognized but not uncom- 
mon affliction. I trust that remarks delivered under the 
direction of an unworthy influence will not prejudice you 
against our — institution — the merits of which you have not 
fairly tasted.” 

Dr. Balland certainly spoke well. Milly hesitated. She 


DANGER. 


2 6 1 

certainly knew even less of her self-appointed guardian than 
she did of him. He spoke with that quiet reasonableness 
which seems to guarantee the truth of the most preposter- 
ous statements, and her acquaintance with Mrs. Fothering- 
ham had been so exceedingly brief and shadowy as to leave 
behind no deposit of constraining influence now that the 
effect of her charming personality was removed. She 
thought too, with a pang, poor child, of her hundred dol- 
lars. The money had been promptly paid on the morning 
after her arrival at the sanatorium, Mrs. Hyland having 
informed her that it was their custom to charge a month’s 
board in advance, as they took no patient for a shorter term 
of treatment. Milly was of course unaware that the prop- 
ositions and terms were different in the case of each indi- 
vidual, and accepted the statement without a thought. 
Would it be right, demanded the hardly acquired instinct 
of economy in her, to sacrifice the possible benefit for which 
she had expended her little store ? 

As she walked on in silence by the doctor’s side she was 
unconscious of the heavy glances of admiration which he 
suffered to dwell from time to time on the youthful, majes- 
tic figure, the poetic, irregular face. A look of as great 
intensity and different character was following her from 
the doorway where Mrs. Hyland stood, her thin figure 
tense with the strenuous gaze she fixed on Milly. Suddenly 
she darted out and laid a quivering, clutching hand on the 
girl’s beautiful, firm arm. 

“ I have seen her again, Anthony ! ” she said, in a loud 
whisper. “ I saw her the night this child came to us. I 
see her by her side now. She is as tall and as pretty. She 
was such a little thing when she left us. Elsie ! No ! No ! 
Not that look ! Oh that a child should look so at a miser- 
able mother ! Oh for her sake — ” 

“ Elizabeth ! ” said Dr. Balland, sternly. He fixed his 


262 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


eyes on those of the agitated, imploring woman with a con- 
trolling look. She shrank and shivered, and finally fell to 
whimpering like a frightened child. 

Dr. Baliand took hei; by the wrist. “ You should not 
have left your room,” he said, in a tone of extreme gentle- 
ness. “ I must attend to you. You will excuse me, Miss 
Barron ? '' 

For four days Milly stayed on divided between fear and 
self-scornful reassurance. She had been told that prepara- 
tory rest was necessary to the success of the treatment in 
her case, so the life she led was one that would have 
passed for existence in a fourth-rate boarding-house. She 
attended the deplorable meals, walked with Miss Bliss or 
one of the sickly sisters, who wore knitted breakfast-shawls 
morning, noon and night, and wrote carefully worded 
letters to her mother. In the evening she sat and read in 
the parlor when one or two of the party would be similarly 
engaged. Of Mrs. Hyland she saw nothing. She noticed 
that the black-eyed man who supported life on crackers 
and prunes was particularly devoted to Mrs. Branton, who 
was frequently heard to address him as “ Now Mr. Van 
Ness ! ” with mundane coquettishness. Milly pleased her- 
self by wondering in a lifeless sort of way if it could be 
possible that a middle-aged romance should enact itself in 
this unpropitious place, and was rather disappointed one 
day at hearing the melancholy gentleman refer to his 
wife. 

It was in the afternoon of the fifth day that she stood in 
a corner of the piazza, looking drearily off to the redden- 
ing western sky, and wondering at the apathy which had 
fallen on her, rendering Haslett and home, life and love as 
vague and meaningless as a tale that is told, when Dr. Bal- 
land approached her. 

“ I think I have decided on the course of your treatment, 


DANGER. 263 

Miss Barron," he said, with the smile that daily grew more 
disagreeable to her. 

“ Yes ? ” 

“ Did you hear," asked the man, his narrow eyes bent on 
the floor, “what Mrs. Branton said of the ministry of 
love ?" 

“Yes," said Milly, with widening eyes, feeling a myste- 
rious accession to the usual sense of repulsion with which 
Dr. Balland’s personality inspired her. 

“ Do you know any thing of its power ? " 

“ I think that is something you have no right to ask, 
sir ! " 

“You have confided — to a degree — in Mrs. Hyland ? " 

“Yes ! " This time the word had a ring in it that plainly 
said “ What follows ? " 

The doctor smiled. “ You like Mrs. Hyland ? " 

“ Yes, I do. I know very little of her, but I am drawn to 
her." 

“ You admit, then, the existence of these irresistible and 
inexplicable attractions ? " 

“ I think her attraction for me is not inexplicable. She 
is a lovable woman as well as a remarkable one." 

“ Her powers of attraction are waning," said Dr. Balland 
with odious softness, “ or shall I say ? eclipsed by a rising 
star of greater magnitude." 

“ I do not understand you, sir ! " 

« Yes, you do. Woman’s instinct is never deceived.” 

“ It is sometimes trapped into a late recognition of imper- 
tinence ! 

“ Impertinence ! Ah, let us cease this fencing. It is idle. 
Millicent, I love you. I loved you from the first moment of 
our meeting, and influences beyond your control or mine 
have determined that " 

“ How dare you address me in this manner ! " cried 


264 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Milly, turning on him with a look which seemed to burn up 
in one blinding flash all the childish softness of her face, 
leaving in its stead the formidable dignity of an insulted 
woman. 

“ I have no choice but to speak to you.” 

Milly rushed past him, but he caught her hand. 

“ Let me go ! ” she said, shuddering with rage and dis- 
gust. “ Oh, will not some one come ? ” 

“ No one will come, and I shall find more effective means 
of detaining you. You shall listen to me.” 

Milly stood still, her native conservatism and dread of a 
scene restraining her impulse to cry aloud ; her horror of 
feeling his touch again keeping her motionless as if undet 
a baleful enchantment. 

“ I have loved you,” proceeded the man, while she 
remained in that loathed obedience, “ ever since I first met 
you at Mr. Archer’s house. I knew that something stronger 
than fate would bring us together, and I made no move 
toward that consummation, though I have never lost 
sight of you. The few days that you have spent in my 
house I have passed in an agony to reveal to you the pas- 
sion for which your own heart is none the less surely 
prepared.” 

“ I think,” said Milly, “ that if my father were here he 
would kill you.” 

“ How little you understand me, you bewitching tempest ! 
I am about to make the greatest sacrifice for your sweet 
sake which a man can make for a woman. You are causing 
me to subvert the principles of a life-time. I have always 
assailed the immorality of the marriage-tie as it is now 
understood. My union with Mrs. Hyland — ” he noticed 
Milly’s start of violent astonishment with real amazement ; 
the shrewdness of the clever sinner is often baffled because 
in acquiring that shrewdness he has lost the power to 


DANGER . 


265 


detect absolute innocence. “ My union with Mrs. Hyland 
has lasted for twenty years. It is at an end now. To all 
intents and purposes it was at an end eight years ago when 
our daughter — to whom she fancies you bear a resemblance, 
by the way — died. Our interests in common have sur- 
vived our love and its visible sign.” 

“ Do I understand that you, Mrs. Hyland’s husband, are 
speaking of love to me?" 

“ If you are still under the dominion of conventional 
ideas, you may reassure yourself. I am not Mrs. Hyland’s 
husband by law and never have been. I am not her hus- 
band by love since my feelings have become centered in 
you. With the cessation of the feeling which is the only 
bond I recognize, the union becomes invalid.” 

Another uncontrollable movement from Milly, and his 
hated hand again detained her. 

“Listen to me. You do not belong to the common 
order of minds. Your efforts at emancipation from anti- 
quated prejudice have been remarkable in one so young. 
But I suppose that social values still exist for you. I offer 
myself to you in marriage, as your world understands it.” 

Milly’s eyes blazed from her colorless face with a courage 
that belied the whiteness of her lips. 

“ I shall leave your house to-night. If I can ever punish 
you for this unpardonable insult I will do it.” 

“ May I ask,” said Dr. Balland softly, “ if, even in your 
immaculate world, it is considered an insult for a gentleman 
to offer himself to a lady as a husband ? ” 

“ For a gentleman ? No ! ” said Milly. “ What has that 
to do with the present case ? ” 

Dr. Balland was as white as she now. Vanity survives 
self-respect, and the man who picks your pocket will receive 
your intimation that he is no gentleman as a crime of far 
deeper dye. 


266 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ I believe there has been recently within your knowl- 
edge a case where one whom even your unexpectedly fastid- 
ious taste pronounced a gentleman, failed to make an 
anticipated offer,” he said, evenly. “ Mine is a sympa- 
thetic nature, and I assure you that I felt myself capable of 
filling a long felt want, and spoke from a real desire to serve 
you as well as gratify myself.” 

The sneer was not fully appreciated, but Milly felt sud- 
denly degraded past redemption by the thought that her 
life had come in contact with that of this man. 

“ It will be worse for you if you do not permit me to 
leave you,” she said in a low voice. 

“ My presence, certainly, my house — hardly, until you 
have apologized for your unbecoming words and made some 
slight return for the misplaced affection I have lavished on 
you. I think the little accident which prevented you from 
being corrupted by Mrs. Fotheringham’s evil communica- 
tions may happen again, and be successful in keeping you 
unspotted from the world for a time at least.” 

“ Do you threaten me ? ” 

“ Certainly not. Where can you find a threat in the sim- 
ple expression of an opinion ? ” 

“ Are you not afraid of what may happen to you when I 
reach home ? ” 

“ Not in the least. I shall take excellent care that you 
do not reach home while you are in your present unsatisfac- 
tory frame of mind. When you do, I think you will not care 
to call public attention to the time you have passed in 
my house.” 

With a bound like that of a deer Milly darted past him 
and down the steps. He was as fleet as she for all his lum- 
bering frame. The man caught her in his arms. She cried 
out then, as she might have cried in the horrid folds of a 
snake, and he released her. She darted into the house and 


DANGER. 


267 


up the stairs. He followed. She dashed desperately into 
her room and flashed the bolt into its place. It was a mis- 
taken thing to do, but what chance had she for connected 
thought ? Her one idea had been to escape from his 
detestable presence. She heard the key turn in the outside 
lock, realized that she was a prisoner, and added to her list 
of recently acquired experiences by fainting away for the 
first time in her life. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


FLIGHT, 


HEN she regained consciousness a sweet, sharp 



VV breeze was blowing upon her from the open window. 
She lay passively on the floor, her terror in abeyance, while 
an intolerable loathing governed her waking mind. She 
had meant to keep her life on so high a plane that she 
could look on sin as from the height of a wise, distant 
angel. And into what a nest of vile secrets had it fallen. 

She lay there self-condemned, self-loathing, cheated. 
Should she ever dare again to flout in the youthful arro- 
gance of consciously exajted aspiration the fair-living, unin- 
spired people about her ? 

But the principle of justice even to herself could not be 
silent in Milly. It told her soon that the feelings which had 
led her into her mistakes were right none the less because 
present consequences were wrong. It was better to be 
fooled and misled a thousand times in the effort to reach 
the highway than to keep contentedly and safely in a path 
which she knew well because it ran in a perpetual circle. 
With the healthier reflection came the full awakening of 
perception and terror. She started and violently endeav- 
ored to open her locked door. Yes, her imprisonment in 
this hateful place was as vivid as a nightmare, real as life. 

Her first impulse to beat at the sealed door, to dash 
against it with frantic hands and cry aloud, she restrained. 
What good would it do ? She could be certain of being 
guarded by that wretch who would tell the others what he 


FLIGHT. 


269 


would of her. She sat down on the floor again, clasping 
her hands over her knees. Milly’s was not a strategic brain. 

She ceased to plan ineffectually and waited, for what, 
she knew not. The rose of twilight faded and the silver of 
moonlight stole over the verdureless landscape without. 
How could she live through the coming night ? It grew 
later. It was after nine o’ clock when a swift step made 
an almost imperceptible pause without her door and a bit 
of torn paper was thrust under it. Milly crouched and 
shivered. She looked at the glimmer of white as though 
it hid a lurking menace. At last she conquered the feeling, 
picked it up, and read by the flare of a match. “ Are you 
afraid to jump out of your window ? I can not get the 
keys. You must get away from here.” There was no 
signature, but in a corner she saw a partially erased cipher 
which her terror-sharpened eyes gradually resolved into E. 
R. H. Was it a trap ? Whom could she trust ? What 
she had learned of Mrs. Hyland certainly tended to under- 
mine her predisposition to trust her. And it was only her 
inference, supposing the trust to be still intact, which indi- 
cated Mrs. Hyland as the writer of the note. And supposing 
again that the note had been written by Mrs. Hyland, and 
that she was acting in good faith, might there still not be 
danger of breaking a limb in the leap and rendering the 
threatened detention apparently due to a natural cause ? 
She stopped for a moment to consider if this was really 
Milly Barron who was meditating an escape, like the heroine 
of a railroad novel, then went to the window and looked out. 
Her room was on the second floor of the very low house and 
was not more than eighteen feet from the ground. But 
directly under her window was a jagged mass of rocks. 
She leaned out and looked down. On the rocks stood an 
enormous hamper filled with clothing for the week’s wash. 
She had seen it standing outside before, but never at her 


270 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


end of the house. She could guess who had placed it there, 
trusting to the effect of apparent chance. 

Well, that would break the fall, but it was only the first 
step after all to escape from her room. The house was 
many windowed, though her apartment was fortunately at 
the back. That man would be watching. Outside her 
door she heard voices in colloquy. 

“ Sitting in the hall, Mrs. Branton ? ” 

“ Yes, I find I can work better by this lamp than any in 
the house.” 

There was no chance for escape on that side. She 
instinctively felt Mrs. Branton to be in league with Dr. 
Balland. At the sound of almost any other name and voice 
she would have been tempted to call out. 

She went again to her window. Below, her strange face 
haggard in the moonlight, stood Mrs. Hyland. She laid a 
finger on her lips and then beckoned vehemently. Milly 
understood, and hesitated no longer. She fastened her 
ulster about her and drew her little traveling hat down 
over her eyes. As she measured the distance of her in- 
tended leap she smiled to find herself saying over and over 
the first words of a little prayer that she had used when she 
was five years old — “Now I lay me, now I lay me.” She 
flung herself over the sill, letting herself hang from her 
slender hands, then dropped. She was unhurt. She turned 
to Mrs. Hyland, forgetting every thing but passionate 
gratitude, and kissed her. 

“ I never thought of this when I brought you here — 
indeed I did not,” panted the poor creature. 

“ I know it. You shall hear from me again.” 

“ Oh, run ! ” cried the woman as a heavy footstep sounded 
on the side piazza. Milly ran then as she had never run in 
all her life before. Over the fields, over roads, through 
the brush, over stones, every muscle strained, every heart- 


FLIGHT. 


271 


beat a shock, every breath an agony. On and on, slacken- 
ing to a desperate walk now and again, then off in another 
wild start, for oh ! those terrible, pursuing feet were gain- 
ing on her. Nearer, nearer ! What was she saying as 
she flew along? “ Now I lay me, now I lay me.” 

How papa would scold her for running so fast ! But 
fixed firm beneath all the floating fancies in her throbbing 
brain was the one intense determination to escape if it cost 
her her life. 

She was on a road now, and suddenly it split into two 
smaller ones. Oh ! Which should she take ? But the 
darting thought that there was no time for deliberation 
urged her on. Between the branching roads lay a widen- 
ing triangle that would be green with grass later in the 
season. It was white now in the moonlight, but across 
its sharp end lay a felled tree, a mass of thick, brown bare 
branches. An agonizing pain in her left side checked her 
as she reached this spot. The slope of a long hill had 
hidden her pursuers, but in a moment she would be full in 
their sight, distinct in that flood of cruel silver. With a 
sudden inspiration the shaded browns of her attire flashed 
into her mind. Then with a mute prayer she dashed in 
among the branches of the fallen tree, burrowing her way 
down close to the ground like a wild thing, hiding the 
betraying whiteness of face and hands in the desperation of 
a last hope. 

The wind swept down from the hill bearing the sound of 
voices with it. She heard the rush of hurrying feet down 
the long incline, and they were close upon her refuge. 

“ You run well, Van Ness,” said Dr. Balland to his com- 
panion, with a careless glance at the slender trunk of the 
tree, “ Mrs. Branton has effected a fine cure in your case. 
Now which road can that girl have taken ? Little fool ! I 
wonder if she thinks she can out-run a man ? ” 


272 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


" She counts on a house where she can take refuge, I 
guess." 

“ She won’t between here and Waraspaw Station, and I 
guess she’s hardly up to an eight-mile race," said Dr. Bal- 
land. He picked up a branch from Milly’s sheltering tree 
as he spoke. The trembling fugitive crouched rigid with 
dread. It seemed as if every branch crept and cracked 
and snapped in treacherous betrayal of her secret. A dull 
remembrance of the poor pretty nymph who was mercifully 
turned into a tree in fleeing from a tormenting love crept 
into her bewildered brain. If only she could become one 
with the dry wood about her ! 

“ See here," said Dr. Balland abruptly, “ you take the 
right road, Van Ness, and I will take the left. That leaves 
room for no doubt. We’ve lost time, but she must be nearly 
spent.’’ 

They started on again, and Milly listened with straining 
ears to the lessening sound of their steps. Once they 
stopped as a whir of wheels approached on the left hand road. 

The wheels stopped also, then rolled on toward Milly’s 
hiding place. Was rescue drawing nigh ? Heaven only 
knew. The occupants of the vehicle might have given a 
seat to one of her pursuers, the loathed and dreaded one, 
animated by a sudden thought of her refuge as a possible 
screen. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


UNCLE JO TO THE RESCUE. 

A MUD-ENCRUSTED, clumsy, but, on the whole, com- 
fortable buggy was being whirled over a lonely country 
road by a gaunt but lively horse, driven by a stout gentle- 
man whose broad face looked jolly even in the moonlight, 
the most trying of lights to jovial expression. The gentle- 
man had some reason for feeling in thorough conformity 
with his looks. He had been visiting some mills in a small 
manufacturing town up in this bleak country, the ownership 
of which he had hitherto regarded as a decidedly mixed bless- 
ing. His investigation of affairs had led to the discovery 
almost unique in human experience, of finding things better 
than he had expected. In fact, a considerable item had been 
mentally added to the sum of his future prosperity, and he 
said to himself as he rather carefully shifted his left leg into a 
comfortable position that he had only hoped his other errand 
up into this God-forsaken region would end as satisfacto- 
rily. 

He drove along in much content, his shrewd, good-humored 
countenance distinct in the soft light, and whistled gently to 
himself a bar of “ Nancy Lee.” 

Suddenly he and the horse started together as a dark 
apparition rose to an awful height from the ground beside 
him, with a wild cry in which the rapturous note of recog- 
nition was indistinguishable. The gentleman dragged a pis- 
tol from under one of the buggy cushions. 

“ Throw up your arms or I’ll shoot ! ” he cried, grasping 


274 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


it in a courageous, but, it must be confessed, unscientific 
manner. 

The horse who had that day added to his usual fullness of 
years and hay the unwonted delicacy of a good measure of 
oats, reared and plunged in a way that would have justified 
his rural owner in raising his price to the next bidder. 

“ Uncle Jo ! oh, Uncle Jo ! Kill me if you will, but take 
me home ! ” 

“ Heavens and earth ! Milly ! ” 

“ Take me, take me, uncle ! ” 

“Well, I rather guess I will ! Good Lord ! You can’t be 
the girl that man asked me if I’d seen. The-re, put your 
foot up here. Stand still, you brute ! Look out for my foot, 
child." 

“ Drive on fast, Uncle Jo, fast ! ” 

“ Drive where, Milly ? I was going to see you.” 

“ Oh, no, no ! Anywhere but there ! ” 

“ Why not ? It’s what I came up here for partly. I’d have 
let the mills at Waraspaw wait until my foot was in better 
shape if it hadn’t been for you.” 

“ Thank God you did not ! Oh, please drive straight 
ahead — no, turn down the next road. They’ll be coming 
back soon. Ah, this road will take us away from the house. 
Fast, faster ! ” 

“ Do you know where else this road takes us, Milly? ” 

“ No; Waraspaw Station is the other way. But I believe 
there is a village somewhere in this direction. Oh, Uncle 
Jo ! If you’ll only go as fast as you can I will tell you all 
when we are miles away, and I don’t care if it is in the heart 
of a trackless forest so long as I am with you.” 

This was flattering, but Mr. White was beset by the pains 
felt by all generous natures under the impossibility of 
reciprocation. He drove on, however, waiting for her 
agitation to subside. When nearly half an hour had elapsed, 


UNCLE JO TO THE TESCUE. 


275 


broken only by Milly’s sobs and convulsive pressures of his 
sturdy arm and his own soothing distracted words, he spoke, 
with a touch of the familiar peremptoriness in his voice. 

“ Now, Milly, what is the meaning of all this ? It looks 
like a pretty serious matter to find you hiding in a wild place 
like this at dead of night, and a man pursuing you. I can’t 
go any further until I know about it.” 

“ I know. I’ll tell you every thing. That you should 
have come just now ! oh, it has been so dreadful ! ” 

So she told him. Mr. White listened in silence with none 
of his usual imperative interrupting questions. When she 
had finished her recital he sat quite still for a few moments. 
Then he spoke. Uncle Jo was not a profane man, but the 
terms he used in which he consigned Dr. Balland to an 
undesirable locality were unmistakable. Milly trembled. The 
whole fiber of life seemed coarsened. They drove on in 
silence for a little while after that, then Mr. White spoke 
suddenly. 

“ I’ll find my way out of this wilderness and leave you in 
a decent house, though I hate to have you out of my sight 
until I put you in your mother’s arms again. It’s to be 
hoped she’ll know what they’re for this time. And then, by 
the Lord that made me, I’m going back to fix that fellow ! ” 
“ Oh, no, please not, dear uncle ! ” pleaded Milly. I 
can’t let you leave me, and I don’t — I don’t know what might 
happen to you. Think how dreadful it would be for me if 
he should harm you in any way. Please, uncle ! ” 

But her second please was not needed. Mr. White had 
relinquished his intention before she finished speaking. He 
was a brave man enough in the face of danger, which in this 
case he scouted, scoffing at the idea that Dr. Balland could 
harm him, but he was accessible to fear in another quarter 
for Milly’s sake. 

The day of single tyrants is over. The days of organized 


276 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


despotism in government and commerce are passing, but 
out of the ruins for which it is largely and honorably 
responsible, has risen a power as gigantic as the Titan of 
Titans, as subtle as the memory of a fragrance. To-day 
the world silently acknowledges the dominion of the majesty 
of the Press, the supreme ruler of the nineteenth century, 
the awful voice of the people. Vox populi vox Dei. 
Bought, bribed, swayed by party interest, shaken by indi- 
vidual caprice in one organ and another, the main body 
stands, invincible and inviolate. To what wise, gentle, 
orderly souls should be given the sacred office of journalist 
— the recorder of days that are the measure of our lives ! 
What shall we say of those who deny their high calling and 
debase their exalted vocation, and defeat the very ends of 
human justice for the defense of which this mighty power has 
been set, by that hideous sensationalism which drags to 
light that which is better hidden, until those who would claim 
their own and add to the sum of right action, shrink back 
from the publicity to be encountered, and leave in the world 
one more unavenged wrong ? 

Mr. White was one of the men whose horror of “ getting 
into the papers ” can not be called morbid because it is so 
general. He knew the contemptible temper of society, which 
uses with hateful readiness as text for a social homily 
the craven maxim of the selfish imperial conqueror, 
“ Caesar’s wife must be above reproach,” as though the shin- 
ing mark of a spotless character were not the visible target 
for malice, the helpless sport of accident. He knew that 
there is no distinction between the accused and the com- 
demned, especially if the condemned be a woman. In fine, 
he knew that for a young girl to be “ talked about,” to figure 
in certain papers in the unearthing of a scandal, was as com- 
plete a social damage as a conviction of all the crimes in 
the decalogue. 


UNCLE JO TO THE RESCUE. 


277 


“ No, no ! You needn’t be afraid,” he said hastily. “ It 
mustn’t get into the papers, whatever we do, and that would 
be the sure result of a row with that — animal.” 

“ It must get into them as soon as I can attend to it,” 
said Milly. “ I did not speak on that account.” 

“ What on earth do you mean ? ” 

“ What I say. Dr. Balland must not be permitted to go 
on luring people to that place. I must w r rite an account 
— I need not bring in my own part — of the sanatorium and 
send it to some reliable journal” 

“ Milly Barron, are you a raving lunatic ? ” 

“ I hope not ; but that is what I mean to do.” 

“ Don’t you suppose it will call down a shower of ques- 
tions and comments that will bring out your own part in 
this disgraceful business ? ” 

“ I have done nothing wrong, uncle.” 

“ Oh Lord ! as if that made any difference ! ” 

“ It does make a difference. It makes a difference to 
me.” 

“ Well ” Mr. White broke off in a sort of despera- 

tion. “ See here, Milly,” he said, trying to speak w T ith the 
judicial calmness which he felt to be absolutely heroic under 
the circumstances, “ I can understand your desire to punish 
that — thing — but you’ll hurt yourself more than you will 
him, my dear. This is probably only one of many frauds 
that he’s engaged in, and it will be sure to kill itself sooner 
or later. But he hasn’t any position or any susceptibilities 
to wound, while you — ” He flicked at the reassured horse 
with his whip, and left the rest to Milly’s imagination. 

“ I was not animated by a vindictive motive, Uncle Jo, 
though I confess that I am bad enough to enjoy the 
thought of punishing that man. But I must see that no 
one else falls into his trap.” 

" That’s their own affair.” 


278 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Not since it has become mine. Oh, don’t you see lights 
ahead ? ” 

Mr. White saw, and fifteen minutes later they had driven 
into a decent, desolate village and found fair accommoda- 
tions at a decent, desolate country inn. The yawning pro- 
prietor received Mr. White’s order for two milk punches, 
good strong ones, with some demur, but a glance at 
the blanched, weary face of the young lady and a cer- 
tain authoritative ring in Mr. White’s voice produced the 
desired effect, and two milk punches, good strong ones, 
appeared. 

“ Now we must have some supper for you, if it is after 
ten o’clock,” said Mr. White. “ According to your own 
account you haven’t eaten much of any thing since you 
left home.” 

“ I can’t eat, uncle. Please don’t talk about it.” 

“ You’ll be in a fine condition to travel home to- 
morrow ! ” 

“ Yes, truly I will.” 

“ Well, I’ll send you off to bed, since you’ll do nothing 
better.” 

“ Please not yet. Let me stay with you and listen to 
your nice, cheery voice,” pleaded Milly, and Uncle Jo had 
the. incredible weakness to yield. 

“ If it hadn’t been such a glorious night I should have 
waited until morning to find my way out to the ‘ sanatary- 
ing,’ as they called it in Waraspaw,” he said. “ George ! 
we’ve something to be thankful for. I tell you what, Milly, 
those mills being located here looks like a Providence. 
It’s been a good thing for more than me. When I found 
out from your mother that Waraspaw was your station I 
concluded those mills needed seeing to right away, though 
my foot did give me fits.” 

“ Oh, the poor foot ! I forgot about it ! ” 


UNCLE JO TO THE RESCUE. 279 

“ You needn’t pity it. If it hadn’t been for that con- 
founded touch of gout you would have been spared all 
this, for I’d have been in shape to keep you at home. I 
say, Milly, you’d better not let your father hear too much 
about that object. He’d go for him if it brought the sky 
down.” 

Mr. White ordered a fire built in the dismal grate of the 
blank sitting-room, pushed an angular, painted wooden 
rocking chair up before it and ensconced Milly therein, 
and made himself as comfortable as circumstances would 
admit on a glassy hair-cloth lounge. 

“ Now, see here, Milly,” he said in his most persuasive 
voice, “ I want to get this thing all settled before we get 
back to your mother. You know this wild idea of publish- 
ing your experience up here has got to be given up. You’ll 
see that when you come to ypurself again. You’re not fit 
to decide now, but I want your promise to mind me until 
your father comes.” 

“ I think I shall not see it, Uncle Jo, though I appreciate 
to the full degree the wretchedness of having my name 
associated with such a matter. I know it must be detri- 
mental to me to be known to have been in such a place, 
and I believe Dr. Balland will make it as much so as pos- 
sible. Don’t foster my nervous disposition to dwell on all 
that with growing repugnance. What would you think of 
a man who fell through a broken bridge in the dark and 
was nearly drowned, and who fought his way out of the 
water and went on with never a word of warning to others 
about that bridge ? ” 

“ I'd think he was mighty lucky to escape from drowning.” 

“ Oh, you wouldn’t stop there. You would think he 
didn’t deserve his luck. And suppose he knew that his 
silence would lead a great number of people to fall through 
in the same place, and hurt individuals and breed a wide- 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


280 

spread distrust in bridges until the progress of travel was 
impeded ? " 

“ I’ll be hanged if I know what you mean ! ” 

“ I mean this, Uncle Jo," said Milly, speaking with 
energy, though her voice was faint. “ Dr. Balland is a very 
clever man. He will go on deceiving people in this matter 
as long as he can make it pay. Now here is a theory 
struggling into life against adverse circumstances, against 
popular prejudice, against overwhelming odds of every 
kind. If there is the faintest possibility of a possibility in 
what the spiritualists claim, it is of such tremendous im- 
portance to the human race that every opportunity for fair 
play should be given in it. Owing to the very nature of the 
theory, with its thousand variations, there has been an 
unparalleled chance for trickery, charlatanism, duplicity of 

every sort, and each added instance ” 

“ Good Lord ! Do you mean that you are going to 
institute an expose in order to give the ghosts a show ? " 

“ Something of the kind. People will continue to 
patronize Dr. Balland and be taken in and discover the fact 
and turn in revulsion from all that he — falsely — claims to 
represent. I want to put a stop to this." 

“ Milly Barron, I never saw a girl like you before, and I 
hope I never may again. Come home to your mother, child. 
To think that you should be Lucy’s niece ! " 

“ It is odd,” said Milly, with a shadowy smile. “ We 
won’t talk any more about this now. You have too good a 
heart, Uncle Jo, not to see in time that it is wrong for you 
to encourage me in my lifelong habit of putting my own 
interests first. And there is one matter concerning which 
I know you will agree with me. I must let Miss Bliss 
know. She is a good woman, and has been my chief friend 
there excepting Mrs. Fotheringham, who is out of it all, and 
poor, poor Mrs. Hyland, whom no one can help." 


UNCLE JO TO THE RESCUE . 


281 


“Yes, yes. Get the young woman away by all means. 
I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll send a man over to that 
— hole — in the morning with an order for your trunk, and a 
note for Miss Bliss asking her to pack it for you, and slip in 
a hint for her to return with him. I hope to the Lord 
she’ll get it all right, and I don’t think that — creature — will 
try to hinder her when he learns where and with whom you 
are. He won’t molest you ; never fear. He’d rather meet 
old Nick himself than any man who is related to you. 
Now you must get some sleep.” 

And wearied, worn, utterly spent, Milly obeyed, and 
slept as she had not slept since the day that Helen found 
her fastening ribbons on the gown that was to make her fair 
in the eyes of Haslett. 

In the morning a man was sent from the inn on the ten- 
mile drive to the sanatorium with a note for Miss Bliss and 
an order for Milly’s trunk signed “ J. S. White, for Millicent 
Barron,” and in due time returned with the trunk and Miss 
Bliss. She had heard nothing of Milly’s flight, having been 
told that Miss Barron was ill, and requested not to knock 
at the door of her room, where Mrs. Hyland, invisible 
since the night before, was said to be in charge. Dr. Bal- 
land and Mr. VanNess had been invisible all the evening, 
and had started out in the morning on an expedition, the 
nature of which was not revealed to the boarders. 

Miss Bliss heard Milly’s story, much adorned by Mr. 
White’s interpolations, in silence. Her full red lips had 
resolved themselves into a tight gray line when it was fin- 
ished. She made no comment. 

“ I must go back,” she said. 

“ My dear Miss Bliss, you must not think of such a 
thing !” cried Mr. White. “You must let us take you with us. 
We will put you on a train that will take you to your own 
home when we reach Boston. We can’t let you stay here.” 


282 


AS COMMON MORTALS . 


“ I’m afraid you’ll have to, Mr. White, though I’m much 
obliged to you for your kindness. You must take the next 
train back on Miss Barron’s account. I’ve got to go back 
to the sanatorium, though I shan’t stay long.” 

“ But alone in that — excuse me — damned place ! ” 

“ I’m used to being alone and I’m not in the least afraid. 
I’ve something besides my packing to attend to before I 
leave. I suppose the man that brought me can take me 
back.” 

She shook hands with Mr. White, then turned to Milly. 
She stood on tip-toe and threw her arms around the girl’s 
neck. 

“ Good-by,” she said ; “ good-by, you pretty thing. I’ll 
never forget you ! ” 

“ You have my card. You will come and see me some 
day,” said Milly, kissing her warmly. 

“ Perhaps. But I shall remember you to my dying day 
if I never see you again.” 

She walked out of the room, warning back Mr. White’s 
second attempt to detain her with an odd dignity, and 
stepped into the wagon which still waited before the door. 

“ Give me your whip,” she said to the driver when they 
reached the sanatorium. 

“ My whip ! ” gasped the rustic, round-eyed. 

“ Yes, your whip. Here are two dollars; it’s not worth 
that, but I can’t stop to bargain.” 

The man evidently agreed with her as he handed over 
the shabby but stout whip, and, with a long, vacant gaze 
turned the head of his dilapidated steed toward home. 

“Has Dr. Balland returned yet ?” asked Miss Bliss of 
one of the sickly maids who passed through the hail as she 
entered. 

“ Yes, ma’am. He’s in his study.” 

The study was a little tank of a room at the end of the 


UNCLE JO TO THE RESCUE. 283 

hall, owing its name to a dozen uninviting books and a pile 
of newspapers and magazines which had accumulated there. 
Miss Bliss knocked at the door. 

“Come in,” said the doctor, in a harassed voice. 

Miss Bliss came. 

Ten minutes later, Dr. Balland, smarting from the vin- 
dictive lashes, bewildered and defenseless from the sudden- 
ness of the attack, breathless, panting, almost panic- 
stricken, yet careful to make no outcry which could lead 
to the discovery of his ignominious position, was crouched 
in a corner, begging for mercy from the fierce little woman 
who wielded the whip with the strength of fury, aided by a 
vigorous arm. But it was not until sheer exhaustion had 
weakened the force of the hurrying blows that mercy was 
granted. 

“ In heaven’s name what does this mean ? ” cried the man, 
mean, pale, and bruised as he rose from his corner. 

“ I’ve found you out, Anthony Balland ! ” said Miss 
Bliss, quite serene now, though a little spent. “ I’ve been 
with Millicent Barron and her uncle. You needn’t start. 
The uncle won’t come near you. He doesn’t want a mur- 
der on his conscience, though any jury in the land that knew 
about you would find it justifiable homicide. He’s on his 
way home with his niece by this time. I stayed behind to 
punish you*.” 

“ You shall pay for this ! ” muttered Dr. Balland. 

“ No, I shan’t ! You won’t sue me for assault and bat- 
tery. You wouldn’t go into a police court for a thousand 
dollars, and I don’t think you’ll try to kill me.” 

“ What has that sentimental, over-strung girl been telling 
you ? ” 

“ What I’ve been a fool not to surmise before ; but I’ll 
tell you something and you can surmise the rest. If you 
don’t break up this thing and leave here I’ll expose you. I 


284 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


don’t mind the disgrace of being mixed up in it so much as 
the thought that some other innocent people like Mrs. 
Fotheringham and Milly and myself and that poor old 
Shotter and his son Mortimer may get drawn into your nets.” 

“ I’ll leave here,” said Dr. Balland, “ and the next time I 
make an unappreciated effort to serve my fellow creatures I’ll 
give it out that none but gentlemen and ladies need apply.” 

“ You’d be pretty lonesome among them.” 

“ Not more than you would,” sneered the man. 

“ I never said I was a lady,” said Miss Bliss, composedly. 
“ I wasn’t born or bred one. My people are common, but 
they’re decent, thank God, and I’m beginning to believe 
that isn’t as common as I thought it was, but really some- 
thing of a distinction in itself. Now I’m going to pack and 
leave. I’ll say nothing about your venture here for the 
sake of Milly Barron. It makes me sick to think of that 
girl being brought into contact with a creature like 
you. You are not likely to harm anyone else here and I’ll 
let you close up the affair in a natural manner.” 

“ Suppose I choose to prevent your going ? ” 

“ Do. I should admire to have you. I promised Mr. 
White and Miss Barron to telegraph them when I reached 
home. If they don’t get the telegram they’ll know some- 
thing’s up, and it will be all up with you. Want to try it ? 
Good-by. I don’t want to see Mrs. Hyland again. I liked 
her.” 

Milly had been at home a week when she received the 
following note. 

Arcelia, N. Y., April 22. 

Dear Miss Barron You got my telegram all right, I 
suppose, but I thought you might like to hear a little more 
about the sanatorium and the circumstances of my leaving 
it. I saw Dr. Balland. I’m afraid my temper got the bet- 
ter of me that time. But it wasn’t a tenth part of what he 


UNCLE JO TO THE RESCUE. 285 

deserved, and I don’t think he’d have minded so much if 
the whip hadn’t left marks on his face. But it did me good 
in more ways than one, and used up all the rage in me for 
a year to come. I don’t "believe my people ever found me 
so easy to get along with as I am now. 

From something your uncle said, I imagine you had a 
notion of showing up the doctor. I don’t think there’s 
any need of that, now. I really believe I settled him. He 
has gone West and the sanatorium is to be closed on account 
of Mrs. Hyland’s health. She is real sick. I have heard 
from Mrs. Hunch — you remember her — the one with the 
daughters — and she says Mrs. Hyland is in a bad way, she 
thinks. The doctor told them all that he was called to 
Nebraska on important business, and that Mrs. H. would 
carry on the affairs of the sanatorium until his return. But 
the day after he left, Mrs. H. called the boarders together and 
told them that her health would not permit her to go on with 
the house any longer, and that she would only keep it open 
until they could make their arrangements for leaving. As it 
happened, they were all beginning on a new month, except 
old Mr. Shotter and Mortimer, and she gave them their 
money back again. I guess that wouldn’t have happened if 
the doctor had been there. Mrs. Hunch writes that Van Ness 
and Mrs. Branton went off together, and she thinks they had 
some kind of a row with Mrs. Hyland. And Mrs. Hunch 
says she believes Mrs. Hyland is alone up in that place yet, 
for she hadn’t gone when the Hunches left, and they were 
the last to go. Mrs. Hunch was very kind in writing to me, 
just as soon as she got back to Scunnerville, and I am writ- 
ing to you just after reading her letter. Hoping that you 
are feeling better than when I saw you last, and that all this 
hasn’t bored you, I remain 

Your sincere friend, 

Almira Bliss. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


THE LAST OF THE VAN SITTARTS. 

HREE years after that night-drive through the shyly 



1 bourgeoning Vermont woods had become a memory 
in the minds of Milly and her uncle, Rodney Haslett was 
listening, in the dignified retirement of his rather sumptuous 
office, to the rapid, enthusiastic words of a slim young 
man, who, as he leaned forward in the urgency of utter- 
ance, laid one hand with affectionate familiarity on Has- 
lett’s knee. 

These three years had been years of matrimony and 
paternity to Haslett. They had also been years of prosperity 
so far as the acquisition of reputation and property was 
concerned, but, unfortunately, they had not been years of 
such uninterrupted pecuniary serenity as he could have 
wished. Haslett’s appetite for luxury and predominance 
grew with what it fed upon. He had not escaped the vulgar- 
ity, which threatens us all as we advance toward middle life, 
of placing an exaggerated value upon ease and elegance 
and the visible signs of prosperity which so greatly enhance 
our social importance. That which had been a mere 
delicacy and fastidiousness of taste in the young man, had 
blossomed into an imperious demand for solid comfort and 
judicious display. His wife’s fortune had been quite what he 
expected it to be, and had, in the first months of their mar- 
ried life, seemed ample for all immediate and future desires. 
Eleanor also had quite fulfilled all his expectations. She 


THE LAST OF THE VAN ST TT A RTS. 


2S7 


was amiable, affectionate, pliable. She had three chil- 
dren in rapid succession, of whom she made a cult. 
She loved her husband, but she adored her children. She 
never left them, and at times her recital of their charms, 
accompanied generally by a vocal attestation of the valuable 
existence of these unusual cherubs, became a trifle weari- 
some to Haslett. He loved his babies, for their father’s 
sake, and was from principle, patriarchal in his idea of 
family life, but his conversational powers were of too ver- 
satile a nature to be chained down to the discussion of one 
subject, however engrossing and delightful. 

It was possibly while listening to one of these maternal 
dithyrambs that the wish first flashed across him, that 
Eleanor would show something of her old impartial hospi- 
tality to a wide variety of ideas. He wished, for instance, 
that she would at least turn her thoughts occasionally from 
the perfections of her offspring, to the regulation of 
expenditure. Eleanor never would understand social 
values, but she was beginningto comprehend social necessi- 
ties, under his tuition, and acquiesced in his intention to 
place his life on a higher social level. They entertained 
rather frequently and expensively. They had a town and 
a country house. They kept many horses. They did a 
variety of things which had grown from luxuries into neces- 
sities. Haslett found himself regarding the simple order- 
ing of his early life with something like a shudder. He was 
a shrewd manager, but he had not the trained commercial 
knowledge of Mr. Reese, and there were losses here and 
there, which would have been impossible in the lifetime of 
the toil-worn, conservative old man. In those days the 
simple wants of father and daughter had been easily sup- 
plied, and Eleanor’s incapacity for figures and dislike for 
the inspection of bills, and tradesmen’s books, had been no 
serious disadvantage in a household where two middle- 


288 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


aged women, who had grown gray in her mother’s service, 
composed the retinue. But now, with a much increased 
establishment, an’d an ever-changing group of modern serv- 
ants, imbued with modern ideas, the bills mounted up 
alarmingly, and Eleanor, unaccustomed to cares of this sort, 
and absorbed in the delightful wants of the fast-coming 
babies, was powerless to reduce them, and ignorant of the 
necessity for that process. In fine, Haslett, the owner 
through his wife of a valuable city house, a charming coun- 
try place, and much paying real estate in desirable localities, 
was decidedly cramped for money. Perhaps this may have 
accounted for the gleam of eager envy in his beautiful eyes 
as he listened to the words of his companion that day 
in the fine office, three years after his marriage. 

“ I have told no one but you, Haslett,” concluded the 
young man; “ I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. It’s 
a great thing, and I am happier than I shall be again until the 
not impossible she ceases to flit past me, showing a profile 
now, an eye then, or best of all, a glimpse of a little white 
soul later on, and stands still in my path until I overtake 
her.” He blushed when he finished speaking, as all 
reserved people do when betrayed into an unusual expres- 
sion of feeling. It must be a high wave of experience 
that will carry these sensitive souls up on the beach of 
another consciousness. They choose the depths for a habit- 
ual abiding place. 

“ It is a great thing, Van Sittart, and there is an enor- 
mous amount of money in it. That is because you don’t 
care about it, I suppose.” 

“ Oh, I can manage to spend it. But the money is 
scarcely a consideration with me, though I don’t deny that 
I share the common delusion as to the possession of per- 
sonal qualifications for disposing of it judiciously.” 

“You are a lucky fellow. I had an idea of not dissimi- 


THE last of the van si tt a RTS. 289 

lar nature, when I was younger, but it never came to any 
thing,” said Haslett, smiiing. 

The lucky fellow did not return the smile ; his eyes were 
fixed intently on the floor as he went over again, rejoicing 
in that successful exertion of mental muscle, that problem, 
the fortunate solution of which he had in the fullness of his 
heart communicated to Haslett. There was something 
fine in the happy meditativeness of that intent look, which 
rendered him even more attractive than when speaking in 
a manner at once diffident and cordial. He was an exceed- 
ingly agreeable person to look upon, chiefly from the air of 
finished distinction which made him noticeable despite the 
absence of any especially noticeable feature. An extreme 
sweetness of expression neutralized the lurking grimness of 
the determined mouth and powerful chin, and the intensity 
of his brown eyes was rather surprising when the lids were 
lifted, for the fair, curly hair seemed to promise the sun- 
niest of blue orbs. As they sat together, the elegance of 
Haslett’s appearance suddenly became the apparent 
result of careful cultivation, while that of the other was as 
evidently an unconsidered birth-right. 

“ I have worked at this for years,” said Van Sittart, sud- 
denly breaking from his reverie. “ It has been my life. 
You fellows, who follow wider lines that bring you into con- 
tact with many things, have no idea of the engrossing nature 
of the applied sciences. When I was a little chap I made 
my poor mother’s life a burden with my experiments. I 
set the house on fire twice, ruined furniture and carpets to 
an incalculable extent, and passed a bandaged existence for 
at least ten months of the year. I was rather a gay young- 
ster, and fond of play, yet I believe I really grudged the 
moments spent in fun and longed to get back to my home- 
made apparatus. I think I had something of the same 
feeling later on when I was at college. I never made 


290 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


much progress in the classics, indeed, I only took the regu- 
lar course and at that place because the Van Sittarts have 
been Harvard men from time immemorial, and my father 
would have turnecT in his grave if I had slighted the family 
custom and the old university. And as soon as I could get 
back to my laboratory I was happy. I never had much fam- 
ily encouragement. A Van Sittart given over to science 
was a lamentable instance of modern deterioration. But 
my father began the deteriorating process and instituted a 
precedent when he would marry Professor Avery’s daugh- 
ter.” 

“ The old professor occupied an excellent place.” 

“ Oh yes ! But it was the Van Sittart custom to marry 
real estate rather than brains. I wish I could give you an 
idea of my grandfather, Haslett. Imagine, if you can, 
Major Pendennis unmilitary, married and Americanized, 
and with the better moral endowment which belongs to an 
unemancipated product of a Puritan civilization. My 
grandfather Avery was to him ‘ an excellent person who 
instructs our sons, sir.’ He was never any thing more than 
overwhelmingly condescending to my mother, though she was 
sweet and limited and unprogressive enough to have dropped 
from a family tree quite as ancient as our own. None 
of Professor Avery’s children resemble him, with the excep- 
tion of one of my aunts, who is the dearest, quaintest, most 
entirely logical and absolutely unpractical of old ladies 
in New York. But I am wandering. My success has gone 
to my head like champagne.” 

Adrian Van Sittart was the only living scion of a house 
that had once been wealthy and was still powerful, socially 
speaking, and, deplore the fact as we may, as we ought, 
our republic has so far fallen short of its original intention 
as to compel our recognition, unwilling or delighted, of 
distinct social grades. His ancestors had been simple 


THE LAST OF THE VAN SIT TARTS. 


291 


grandees in the days when our big, brilliant, terrible metrop- 
olis was a prim, pleasing old Dutch town. They had 
married into the families of other primitive, colonial 
grandees, and had gone on their sober way with all the self 
sufficient content of the Harrises of whom there is no record 
at that date, with, it must be confessed, rather more dignity 
if scarcely more illumination. They had not been particu- 
larly patriotic, being Tories by instinct if not circumstance, 
but they had been good citizens, kind if condescending 
neighbors, and admirable people in all relations of life. 
Never a Van Sittart of them all had married out of his or 
her set, until the father of the present Adrian had com- 
mitted the daring innovation of wedding the pretty 
daughter of the learned but humbly-born and poorly 
endowed professor of moral science in a New York college, 
not therefore strictly speaking, an instructor of Van Sittart 
sons, since they were, according to their last representative, 
invariably Harvard men. Many Adrian Van Sittarts had been 
gathered to their fathers since those vanished days of peaked 
roofs, New Year’s calls and silver tankards, and slept, a 
peaceful company, in St. Paul’s church-yard, while the roar 
and rattle of Broadway swirled past their forgotten graves. 
A strange place, that, friends, to pause and muse on the 
mutable nature of life, the immutable certainty of death. 
Adrian Van Sittart, the last of his line, was not conscious of 
any particular sentiment concerning his forefathers, but he 
liked now and then to find his way into the old church-yard 
and stand by the weather-worn stones which grew daily 
more dimly sacred to the memory of this and that Adrian, 
and wonder what those quiet, pompous, stately old gen- 
tlemen would think could they waken for an instant, to see 
the tide of a giant commerce sweeping about their little 
island of dust and obsolete memories. He wondered also 
at the development of modern conscience, which made him 


292 


AS COMMON- MORTALS. 


combine with the antique virtue of desiring to preserve a 
stainless personal record for the ancestral sakes of these 
departed worthies, a wish to make his own existence some- 
thing more widely worth the living than had been these 
simple, decent, selfish lives, which had left no record save 
that handful of dust beneath the fading inscriptions on the 
leaning stones, and perhaps a sturdy impulse to right action 
in the young descendant who stood solitary among the 
time-worn tombs. 

Something of the simple, direct, nature of these dead men 
was in this, the final flower of their race, and blended oddly 
with the clear, keen intellect which was all the inheritance 
Professor Avery had to leave his grandson. Perhaps it was 
this same solid practicality of the Van Sittarts which caused 
the speculative, philosophical mind of the gray teacher to 
assume in Adrian the scientific form, so that this outcome of 
two widely different families, that of the sturdy Knicker- 
bockers and that of the New England student-farmers, 
resulted in what a discharged servant anathematized as “ an 
inventing swell Old Adrian Van Sittart regarded his 
son’s son as a gratification to his pride in the natural com- 
bination of countless inherited virtues, but to the professor 
the boy was the very tassel on the cap of the climax of civ- 
ilization. He had never had a son of his own, and the child of 
his sweetest, meekest and prettiest daughter was doubly dear 
to him. His philosophical mind was mightily pleased by this 
marriage, which the dear unworldly soul never thought of 
regarding as social promotion for his daughter. 

“ Our blood is thin, sir,” he said to a friend as old and 
quaint and pure-hearted as he, “ it is the blood of people 
who have farmed and taught and starved up in our bleak 
New England country for years. We have wrung a scanty 
subsistence from an ungenerous soil. We have lain hard 
and slept cold. We have had little fresh meat, no wine. 


THE LAST OF THE VAX SI TT A RTS. 


293 


Who of us can remember any thing stronger than cider on 
the tables at home? Now here are these Van Sittarts, 
gouty, port-flushed, richly fed, warmly clad, well nourished 
for generations. My son-in-law is a fine fellow. Look at 
his deep black hair and eyes ; that hair is as strong in its 
abundant growth as curled wire. See the color in his 
cheeks ; it will be too high in a few years, but it is a fine 
color now. Now turn to my Mary. Does she look like 
any thing to you but one of our own May-blossoms, so frail 
and sweet and gently pink and white ? Her blue eyes are 
pale, her fine, soft straight hair is pale. She is not much 
more than a lovely shadow, though it’s been a shadow that 
has made the sunshine of my life all these years. She 
hasn’t blood enough. But her boy ! His eyes flash with 
the dark fire of the Van Sittarts, but the light of the pale 
spring sunshine that brightens his mother’s hair turns the 
Van Sittart curls on his little head to gold. Look at his 
mouth ! It is as firm, baby as he is, as old Adrian’s was 
when he was Judge of the Supreme Court. But there is a 
delicacy about that nostril now that makes me think he will 
temper justice with mercy if ever he gets on the bench. Ah, 
that delicacy is too marked in his mother; she’ll die of 
consumption yet. And I, old friend, I too. I’ve been 
dying of it these dozen years, old fashioned consumption. 
But the boy won’t go that way, thank God. That chest of 
his, now ! It’s a pity they don't wear ruffles in these days. 
That chest would set them out like those in his great-grand- 
father’s picture in the library of the Van Sittart house. 
And he’ 11 have Van Sittart determination to make Avery 
dreams come true. * I can say my nunc dimittis now the 
boy is here.” 

And he said it soon after, dear man. It was not long 
before the gentle old soul became too much for the long 
wasted body. Neither was it long before the May-blossom 


294 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


of a daughter faded, and the pretty flower from New 
England soil was laid away in New York earth to drop to 
dust with innumerable Van Sittarts. Her husband was a pas- 
sionate man in his loves and hates, and he had centered so 
much love in this pure and gentle creature that he found 
nothing worth living for after her passing, except to watch 
for the gleam of her vanished smile as it reappeared like a 
celestial benediction now and then in the small face of 
her little son. He cared for the child with a fierce, gloomy 
tenderness for many years. He neglected his affairs, in 
sad deviation from the family interest in property which 
had survived all affliction in the minds of his predecessors, 
and, when the lad was just entering manhood, he suc- 
cumbed to death with a lack of resistance surprising in one of 
the Van Sittarts, who were wont as a family to fight stoutly 
with the grim conqueror for every moment of fleeting life. 

There was not so much money for the last Adrian as 
people had expected, but there was enough. He went 
through college, according to family custom, creditably but 
not brilliantly. He came back to New York and outwardly 
led the life of a petted favorite among the golden youth of 
the city. Inwardly, his whole existence beat to the pulse 
of an overmastering scientific ambition. 

I said he was of a direct and simple nature. He never 
said to himself that he would offer himself up a living 
sacrifice to humanity as Haslett had said in his fresh, 
unspoiled youth. He had never declared with Ferrard that 
he would grasp the utmost power that swept within his 
reach in the circle of events. Silently he worked, drawing 
close and closer to the mighty heart of old mother nature 
that he might read a secret there, which, revealed, would 
make life easier to many. He stilled relentlessly the long- 
ings of his most passionate nature that he might give a 
single-hearted devotion to the mystery which it was his high 


THE LAST oe the van si tt arts. 


2 9 $ 


calling to penetrate. He wrought and worked, laborious, 
patient, faithful. The idea that had seized him when he 
was a stripling of sixteen, had never left him through these 
twelve years. He had formulated one or two side issues 
into definite shapes of practical utility, which had won for 
him a little gold, a little fame, and the scathing title 
bestowed by the ‘discharged footman. But the chief 
experiment reigned supreme. It dominated his existence 
as completely as all embryonic work that holds the promise 
of effectiveness must do. 

At last it came— the supreme moment which in some 
fortunate lives justifies the self-imposed vocation. His call- 
ing and election were sure. The link was found ; the chain 
of discovery complete. For all time to come, toiling men 
the world over would thank Adrian Van Sittart for the 
clear light thrown on a dark and devious path. Van 
Sittart came from his laboratory as a vision-visited devotee 
comes from the divinely illuminated altar. He was glad this 
thing hafl been done. He was glad, with the passionate en- 
ergy of effective youth, that he was the one who had done it. 

He felt the need in that honest hour to communicate his 
joy, to pour his overflowing soul into the receptive vessel 
of a kindred nature. There was an immense power of 
reticence beneath that frank, ingenuous bearing, and when 
to reticent people comes the need for expression it is impe- 
rious. His parents were dead. His chief friends were 
pleasant fellows of his own class who toiled not, neither did 
they spin, and who would be more than ignorant of the 
force of an experience like this. A year before he had met 
Haslett and his wife at a fashionable summer hotel. He 
had been drawn to Haslett as every one was. He loved 
him as Ferrard loved him, almost. Haslett, the one man 
with whom he had enjoyed an intimate sense of companion- 
ship, came to the front rank in his memory now. He would 
tell Haslett. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


FOUR YEARS. * 

I ^HE three years had dealt not ungently with Milly. Her 
first sensations on reaching home were those of one 
snatched from a yawning gulf of water in the depths of 
which lurked hideous, waiting monsters, and placed on 
the stable deck of a homeward bound ship. There was no 
room in her mind for aught but the sense of relief and 
rescue. Eleanor’s marriage, which occurred soon after 
her return, produced in her only the slightest of passing 
agitations. When her father returned they went back to 
their own home, and she took up the burden of life again, 
feeling it heavy but endurable. She was not happy, but she 
did not grieve ; for hope was still strong within her. Her 
efforts toward preparation for work had been checked ; her 
love had been thrown back on herself, but she was young, 
young. She must possess her soul in patience. She had 
been sane enough to see that her defeat in the endeavor to 
fit herself for fine action had been due to the unfortunate 
choice of her inexperience. She came in time, slowly and 
with pain, to see that this was also true with regard to her 
misplaced love. 

Her relations with Mrs. Haslett became friendly in due 
time, though intimate, never again. When, she saw 
Haslett’s first child, a pang shot through her that almost 
awakened the old misery, but it was brief and left a lasting 
tranquillity behind it. Henceforth he was to her only her 
friend’s husband, the father of her friend’s child. 


FOUR YEARS. 


297 


She came to be a little amused at the transformation of 
Eleanor Reese, the reformer, into Eleanor Haslett, the 
matron, who felt that what went on in the world outside her 
nursery was of no particular importance, and she saw in the 
docile wife and rapturously enslaved mother the same sweet, 
not over-strong or over-fine, Eleanor, to whom she owed the 
raptures of her first girlish enthusiasm, and her introduction 
to thoughts that she was now left to follow out alone. 

Miss Bliss’s letter had made her succumb readily to the 
imploring entreaties of her parents that she should be silent 
about the fraudulent sanatorium. The coarser-fibered but 
more effective little woman had used a more summary 
method of bringing the doctor’s ill-starred venture to an 
ignominious close. 

It was with a pang that Milly read in a western paper a 
year later of the death of Mrs. Hyland. Did new wander- 
ings await the strange, gifted, unbalanced soul, or was it all 
ended with the frail, crumbling body ? Alas, it must be 
added to a long list of unanswered questions that vexed 
her ! 

Another notice under a different heading in a small coun- 
try weekly awakened a different emotion. It was of Miss 
Bliss’s marriage, of which Milly had been duly notified in 
advance, and which she had attended, to the unspeakable 
gratification of the bride. Miss Bliss’s letter announcing 
the expected event was characteristic. 

“ I know after all I said to you about getting married 
you’ll think I’m crazy, but perhaps you won’t wonder quite so 
much when I tell you that he is almost stone deaf and can’t 
hear me scold. I don’t think it would ever get much beyond 
that, for he is strong as a horse, and could soon settle me. 
He is handsome as a picture, if I do say it, and sweet tem- 
pered to a degree that is positively improbable. He is not 
a bit of a medium, and it makes mother feel so bad to see 


298 


AS COMMON M0R7ALS. 


the little mahogany table brought out now grandma’s gone, 
that we don’t have any seances. 

“ As to the bother of married life, why, I suppose it is there 
just as much as it ever was, but somehow you don’t feel 
afraid to risk it with a great, big, fair fellow who can pick 
you up and walk off with you if you do weigh a hundred and 
sixty pounds. His name is Elisha Marvin, and he came 
into this neighborhood through having a farm left him. If 
you could come to the wedding I think my cup would be 
full.” 

Milly went, in order to fill the cup, and took with her as 
fine a gift as her still limited means would permit. 

She was well paid by the assurance that her odd friend 
had every prospect of happiness in the society of the large 
good-looking, sheepish man, who could not hear a word she 
said, but followed her brisk movements with eyes of pensive 
admiration. 

The history of those years would be that of an intense 
inward life, eventless to beholders. There were spiritual 
struggles, forlornly fought out alone, as one by one dear 
beliefs were resigned ; there was the hard, laborious effort 
of an untaught, undisciplined mind to adjust itself to an 
altered aspect of life, and to walk unaccompanied in a new 
path of study and thought. But at least our heroine was 
wiser and only a little sadder, for she was Milly still, hope- 
ful, trustful, fervent in her effort to find the right clew for 
guidance in this puzzling world, and when a fourth year had 
been added to the three, she was a faulty, magnificent creat- 
ure, maturing rapidly to a noble development. 

At the end of the fourth year a new experience came to 
her. 

Some years ago she had attended the fashionable school 
in Goverick, which was a boarding school as well as day 
school. Its expensiveness had been rather a heavy drain 


FOUR YEARS. 


299 


on her father’s slender purse, and the only discernible 
result of her years of study there had been in the perfecting 
of her French accent and fastidious discrimination in 
matters pertaining to the toilet, and' the friendship of a girl 
who had fallen in love with her after the innocent and time- 
honored fashion of school girls. This affection was mani- 
fested in a sober and characteristic manner. Milly’s 
admirer was a plain, matter-of-fact, sensible creature, with 
an ugly, aristocratic face, and a clear sad consciousness of 
her own lack of charm. Brilliant, mercurial, imaginative 
Milly represented the sweetest maidenhood to this maiden 
who had so little of its grace, and they had become warm 
friends, through Laura Schuyler’s quiet adoration and 
Milly’s grateful acceptance of it. Miss Schuyler had been 
placed at the school, which had more than a local reputation, 
while her mother and father traveled in Europe, seeking 
health for the latter, and finding for him only a grave at 
Mentone. Mrs. Schuyler did not return to America, but 
had her daughter placed in the care of a responsible chaperon 
and taken to Rome, where she joined her with the intention 
# of making it her home for several seasons. Even in Laura’s 
sorrow for the long dreaded and expected death, she did 
not forget Milly. 

“ As soon as we return to New York you must be with 
us,” she sobbed ; “ ah, dear Milly ! it will be a long 
while before that time comes. How can we ever bear that 
house without dear, sick papa ?” 

So she went, but through all the years the correspondence 
between the girls had never flagged, and it had been one of 
the pleasures of Milly’s life to read Laura’s prosaic, circum- 
stantial accounts of existence in foreign cities, the very 
names of which -supplied romance to Milly. 

The Schuylers were coming back now, and the house in 
Gramercy Park was being re-decorated for their reception. 


3 °° 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


a As soon as we are settled, dear Milly,” wrote Laura, 
“ we must have you with us for a week, a month, as long as 
you will stay.” 

To Mrs. Barron, this projected visit of her daughter to a 
representative of the wealth, breeding and culture of the 
metropolis, was something to be thankful for and dwelt on 
with pardonable pride. She could not refrain from frequent 
mention of it in the course of calls made and received, and 
was conscious of the fine effect of “ Gramercy ” as a word- 
The poor lady’s maternal pride had been rather under a 
cloud since the affair of the sanatorium. It had, of course, 
been discussed in family conclave, and with bitterness. 
Milly’s mother had heard Mrs. White and Mrs. Elkins con- 
gratulate themselves on the well-regulated immunity of 
Kitty and Helen from the perils to which Milly’s unfortu- 
nate character rendered her liable. 

Mrs. Barron’s private opinion of her daughter fluctuated 
between amazed admiration and perplexed disapproval, but 
now the obscured pride shone out again resplendent, and 
the dear woman would have felt it impious to refuse to see 
the hand of Providence in this desirable invitation, which 
seemed at once a confirmation of Milly’s unusual virtues, 
and a fitting rebuke to her sisters’ unseemly glorification of 
her nieces. 

In due time Mrs. and Miss Schuyler returned, and Milly, 
for the first time in four years, flitted out of the home-nest 
again, this time with the full approval and consent of all 
parties immediately and indirectly concerned. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


A QUESTION OF HONOR. 

I N a small, snug, heavily gilded and solidly furnished 
room of the Lenox Club house, a group of men con- 
versed together in low, cautious tones. Ferrard’s was the 
most noticeable face there, but there was no lack of shrewd- 
ness in those that were now turned to his. 

“You think he is sure of the nomination, Ferrard?” 
asked a silver-haired man, with a heavy serviceable coun- 
tenance. 

“ Not a doubt of it. I have had Haslett’s help in my 
part of the work, and you know what that is, gentlemen.” 

“ You have considered the matter pretty carefully, Mr. 
Ferrard,” asked a little, red-haired man whose black eyes 
twinkled with ferret-like sharpness. “You think our good 
friend White is by all odds the best man for the place? ” 

“ The best man we have at hand certainly. And I see 
no object in opening a question which has been finally 
settled.” 

“ It never occurred to you to look nearer home ? ” 

« Sir ?” 

“ Do you wish me to repeat my question?” 

“ No, I wish you to explain it.” 

“ With the permission of the other gentlemen I will 
gladly do so.” 

The others testified to the permission by a series of grave 
nods. 

Mr. Rayner’s eyes were fixed on his fingers, which gently 


3°2 


AS COMMON MORTALS . 


manipulated a button of his coat as he proceeded to explain, 
but ever and anon the lids were lifted, as a keen glance of 
measuring scrutiny darted to Ferrard’s face. 

“ Our worthy friend White is an excellent man — most 
excellent ; but hardly — well, call it inaccessible enough for 
the place. I have the best opinion of White, and in speak- 
ing for myself, I speak for the rest ; but it has occurred to 
me — and again, in speaking for myself, I speak for the 
other gentlemen present — that he is more likely to be of 
service in an— ah — unofficial capacity. He is one of those 
estimable and invaluable persons, who exercise a more ben- 
eficial influence in a community as private citizens than as 
public men. In fact, Mr. Ferrard, we have come to the 
conclusion that we have been rather hasty in using his name 
among those of the nominees, and we believe we have found 
a substitute which will justify us in withdrawing it.” 

“ I think I shall require a little more explanation, Mr. 
Rayner, in order to fully understand this matter.” 

“ We had best come to the point at once, gentlemen,” 
interposed the first speaker. “ Mr. Ferrard, we believe that 
our endeavors to bring about the nomination of Mr. White 
have been mistaken, and that your efforts in his interest 
could have been better utilized in your own. We ask you 
to consider yourself as a candidate for nomination.” 

Ferrard arose. “ This is the purpose for which you have 
come together this evening ? ” 

“ Well, yes.” 

“ Have you any reason, gentlemen, to suppose that Mr. 
White will fail to sustain the nomination ? ” 

“ We think the position contingent upon success will be 
better filled by yourself.” 

“ Your reply is flattering to me, but not to the point. I 
wish to ascertain if you have any more tangible cause for 
this change of base than lies in a change of individual 


A QUESTION OF HONOR. 303 

opinion, which we all know is occasionally determined by 
causes which bear no relation to state affairs. Has there 
been any turn in the tide, of which I am at present ignorant, 
which has convinced you that you have made a choice 
detrimental to your party ? Is this a forced conclusion ? ” 

These men were wise enough, for the most part, to rec- 
ognize the folly of any attempt to temporize with Ferrard, 
whose attitude seemed to promise a final pose, rather con- 
founding to their intimate knowledge of his vaulting ambi- 
tion. 

“ A national party is but the organized combination of 
individual opinions,” murmured a fair, nervous little man, 
rather shyly. 

Ferrard deigned not to acknowledge this contribution to 
the wisdom of ages. 

“ You are aware that I have been acting in this matter as 
Mr. White's friend, and to a certain degree, agent?” 

“ Certainly, we — ” 

The door opened, and Haslett entered. His eyes flashed 
from Ferrard’s grim face to the respectable &nd slightly 
discomposed group around him. 

“ Pardon my tardiness, gentlemen,” he said. 

“ You come at an opportune moment, Mr. Haslett,” said 
the gray-haired man. “ The proposition to which I referred 
in our conversation of yesterday has just been made to Mr. 
Ferrard, and his manner of receiving it has not been encour- 
aging, thus far. From your close personal relations with 
him, I think it might have some weight if you were to 
express to him the full and cordial approval of the measure 
which you accorded to my mention of it.” 

Haslett did not choose to meet the eagle-like glance of 
demanding inquiry which Ferrard darted upon him. 

“ Mr. Amsden did me the honor to describe to me his 
idea of the situation, Ferrard,” said he, seating himself with 


3°4 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


an air of negligent ease, and drawing his gloves lightly 
through his hands. “ 1 quite agree with him as to the 
unfortunate choice that has been made in the selection of 
your esteemed friend, White, less as your friend than as a 
politician ; I was bound to admit that you are vastly better 
endowed with qualifications for the office, which it is our 
intention to fill worthily." 

“ Do you think my best preparation fora position of pub- 
lic trust would lie in a breach of private faith ?” demanded 
Ferrard. 

“ Breach of faith isn’t a nice phrase, Ferrard. This is no 
official meeting, but a friendly conclave, and mild language 
is more agreeable among friends.” 

“ Allow me, then, to distinctly assure these friends, in the 
mildest manner, that I decidedly and finally refuse to con- 
sider the proposition that has been made to me.” 

“ I think you stand in your own light, Mr. Ferrard.” 

** There we certainly differ, Mr. Rayner.” 

“ This is your ultimatum ? ” 

“ This is my ultimatum.” 

“ In that case,” said Mr. Amsden, “ though we deplore 
your inability to see the matter from our point of view, we 
have an alternative which fortunately lessens the depriva- 
tion which we suffer from the loss of your name in the 
coming contest. Mr. Haslett, I believe you were advised 
of our intention in the contingency — which we did not 
seriously apprehend — of Mr. Ferrard’s refusal to take the 
place of Mr. White. This is not the opportunity for a for- 
mal offer to be made, but we would like your assurance of a 
disposition to consider the proposition until it emanates 
from an authoritative source.” 

“ You have it, unconditionally,” said Haslett, in his delib- 
erate, silvery tones. 

“ Gentlemen,” said Ferrard, “I think it fair to inform 


A QUESTION OF HONOR. 


3°5 


you that I shall use, to the best of my ability, such influence 
as I possess in other quarters to assure and sustain the 
nomination of Mr. White. I bid you good-evening.” 

It might have been an hour later, as Ferrard was seated 
in intense meditation, before his dying fire, that Haslett 
entered unannounced. These four years had left^no more 
sign of change on Ferrard’s massive face than would that 
brief period of time on the vast, solemn countenance of the 
Sphinx. Haslett’s more delicate features had altered with 
the gradual determination of their final dominating expres- 
sion. The face looked to-night like a beautiful, deeply-col- 
ored, hard mask. 

“ I was just a bit surprised by your action to-night, Fer- 
rard.” 

“ We have been mutually surprised in each other.” 

“ Your sentiment concerning White is an unexpected 
development.” 

“ Your calculation did not appear to exclude expectation in 
that quarter.” 

Haslett made no attempt to parry the blow. 

“ White has been always understood to be your tool,” he 
said, after a pause. 

“ That may have been. But not a tool with which I risk 
cutting my fingers.” 

“ I should never credit him with any such capacity.” 

“ I do not.” 

“ Can’t you be a little less curt and more explicit ? ” asked 
Haslett, with the weary gentleness of friendly expostulation 
in his tones. 

“ I think you desire something less than explicitness from 
me, Haslett. For my own part in this matter, I care as little 
for White as you do. The disappointment of his personal 
ambitions I do not regard as worthy of consideration. If 
they can get a better man than he, let them put him in. 


3°6 


AS COMMON MORTALS , 


But I can not afford to mortgage my whole future for the 
sake of an advancement resulting from the securing of a 
small office. Things are not done in corners in these days, 
fortunately. I should offend those who hold but an ordi- 
nary sense of honor, by ousting the man in whose interest 
I had pledged myself to work.” 

“Is your ordinary standard of honor offended by my 
accepting of the chance you have refused ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ That is a hard word, Paul — after fifteen years.” 

“ I think not. I don’t like your proceedings, Haslett, 
but my likes have ceased to be of importance to you. I 
believe I do you full justice. There is really less culpabil- 
ity in your acceptance of the chance, since I am more 
directly involved with White. And you won’t hurt him. I 
intend to have him nominated, and by means of his election 
to secure for myself — by legitimate means, mind you — a 
rather more favorable place than the one of which you are 
seeking to deprive him. You have my full permission to 
use this statement as you may see fit.” 

“ Am I responsible for the decision of half a dozen older 
men ? ” 

“ Well, yes, I think you are.” 

“ Do you not credit those gentlemen with the possession 
of standards of ordinary honor ? ” 

“ Widely considered, no. And I intend always to act on 
wide considerations. The whole situation has cleared to 
me. Rayner has a personal animosity to White which has 
been suddenly pricked into life to the frustration of politi- 
cal intentions which he believed to lie beyond that level. 
Amsden has much to look for from Rayner — you know 
their business complications as well as I, and has his son-in- 
law in his mind in this connection besides. As for the 
others — ” Ferrard lifted his great shoulders expressively. 


A QUESTION OF HONOR . 


307 


“ What is the need for further discussion, Haslett ? I am 
only giving you information which has been carefully cut 
and well dried in your mind.” 

“ You imply motives on my part — ” 

“ Which are sufficiently explained.” 

“ The place was intended for you ; offered to you.” 

“ You knew I wouldn’t take it, Haslett. And do you 
suppose I credit Amsden with an original mind ? ” 

“ You strain the bond of friendship, Ferrard.” 

“ I do not,” said Ferrard, rising abruptly. “ It has been 
wearing thin for a long time, Rodney. It broke to-night 
when you entered that room. I need not waste words. It 
is a sorry conclusion for fifteen years of companionship.” 

“ It is you who bring it to this conclusion, Ferrard.” 

Ferrard made no answer. 

As Haslett left him he resumed his seat and leaned his 
head on his hand in the old attitude. 

“ It’s a great mistake to care for anyone,” he said to 
himself. “ Haslett is a failure.” 

The moral aspect of the case troubled him not at all. 
His regard for Haslett sank under the weight of his disap- 
proval for a man who would, in the opening of his political 
career, blot his record for the sake of a small reward, for 
any reward. In the existence of sin per se, Ferrard believed 
not at all, but he believed implicitly in honesty as the best 
policy. His intellectual scorn for treachery was boundless, 
and contempt for the suicidal folly of deviation from the 
right path broke the last link of a worn-out chain. 

“ I wonder,” mused Ferrard, “ if a man in developing his 
nature in one direction must always pay for it by a corre- 
sponding deficiency elsewhere. That scientific turn of Has- 
lett’s was a magnificent surprise. And yet the man is hope- 
lessly marred.” 

The thoughtful eyes still dwelt on the fading embers. 


308 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Something besides the burned-out coals was dropping to 
ashes as he looked. 

As men grow older and harder they learn to see unmoved 
the flowers of sentiment float brown and withered to the 
ground. The autumnal harvest of a successful prime 
leaves no time for regret because of those unfruitful blos- 
soms of spring. 

Ferrard’s nature absolutely lacked the key-note that 
sounds the minor chords of regret through the soul, but, as he 
sat alone by the fire where they two had talked and dreamed 
in other years, and talked and planned later on, ard where 
they would dream and plan together never again in the old 
frank confidence, there was that in his face that shadowed 
all its luminous strength with the sobriety of an unspoken, 
irrevocable farewell. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


VANITY FAIR. 

S URELY the chief charm of New York is to be found in 
her squares. Certain of these, in their vivid examples 
of local color, epitomize some characteristic phases in the 
social history of the city. Washington Square, with the 
grave and mellow stateliness of the north side overpower- 
ing the increasing squalor of the south, is peopled to the 
imagination by the fine and leisurely ghosts of a recently 
departed generation. The splendid, ample, old red and 
white houses, the dignified, leaf-crowned age of noble trees, 
the sunlight that seems always to fall in a broad quiet on 
the pavement, flecked with nodding shadow in summer, 
laced across by the outline of delicate, bare branches in 
winter, give to the place an abiding air of soberly sump- 
tuous repose, though across the green breadth of the park 
an unlovely life breathes and breeds. 

The shadows lie thicker in Stuyvesant Square. The 
magnificent breadth of Second Avenue lies melancholy with 
the hint of a not distant shabbiness, and the obsolete prom- 
ise of a splendor faded Lefore fulfilled. If one thinks of 
the ghosts in Washington Square as jovial, portly and pros- 
perous shades, those in Stuyvesant must surely be thin and 
gray and aristocratic and sad. Alas, ghosts walk in both 
squares, ghosts clothed upon with flesh, solid, substantial, 
visible ; men and women grown bitter or stolid, the melan- 
choly disillusionized ghosts of their young, hopeful, single 
hearted selves. These ghosts we have always with us. We 


3io 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


are not afraid of them, they are so terribly common. We 
greet them with unaffrighted smiles. These sleek bodies 
with their haunting inmates meet us on every side. Yet 
there is nothing half so awful in life as these fading shades 
of healthy souls. Perhaps you and I have joined this ghastly 
company. Our meeting eyes are hollow with memories, 
growing fainter, fainter day by day. But this is one of the 
things we never mention. Let us vanish from the face of 
the earth, grown unfamiliar to our altered eyes, before we 
admit what we are. Come, friends, let us walk with the 
other ghosts in Madison Square. 

Here the sunshine is bright, not mellow. Commerce in its 
daintiest aspect sweeps about it, and a great hotel stares 
with a hundred eyes across the green at the fine houses and 
grave church on the other side. 

There is no place here for an eidolon. Here young 
America, conscious of an excellent pedigree, might walk 
with a fine sense of the great heart of the city beating in this 
pleasant center, keeping time to the bounding pulse of his 
own hopeful, ambitious youth. 

Eastward again and southward by a few blocks and 
another and smaller square allures us. Quiet, moderately 
modern, with no sign of fashionable decrepitude, and every 
sign of a sober and abundant expenditure of wealth lies 
Gramercy Park. One finds it impossible to suspect its 
inhabitants of plutocratic garishness or aristocratic shabbi- 
ness. An air of refined comfort and judicious luxury per- 
vades the houses surrounding the little park. The heavy 
doors of one of these had opened to admit Milly, and within, 
in a wonderful room, all dull purple and dead gold, Laura 
Schuyler caressed her friend. 

“ I should have known you anywhere, but oh, Milly, how 
sumptuous — you have grown ! ” 

“ And you are the same dear old girl.” 


VANITY FAIR. 


311 

“Yes, brown and limp and wrinkled as ever, like a tan- 
colored glove.” 

“ Laura,” laughed Milly, with an affectionate, chiding 
intonation. 

“ Do you suppose I have returned to my native shores 
with any idea of startling society, with the revelation of my 
loveliness ? But I can supply the revelation, if not in my own 
person.” 

. “ You are going to be just as absurd as ever. But I'm 
glad of it. No one has spoiled me for so long, Laura, except 
papa and mamma, and that is among the conditions of 
thought in my case,” 

- “Your letters have been delightful reading, Milly, but 
they have not prepared me for you as I see you now. You 
grow strange and stranger to me every moment. I got none 
of this new surprising self in your writing.” 

“ I ought to be changed. But my life lately has been just 
what you knew it to be Laura, outwardly. All the living 
and Suffering that has fallen to my lot came in the first two 
years after you left America. My sharpest experience came 
to me while I was yet in teens.” 

“ I think I shall not pity you, Milly, whatever they may 
have been. Any thing is better than living vicariously as I 
have done, as I shall do, always. What is that you used to 
quote about looking into happiness with other people's eyes ? 
No, don't talk about it. There isn't any thing to tell. There 
never will be. I haven’t even had the luxury of woe. I 
want to know about you. Are you as full as ever of lovely, 
high-minded, philanthropic, impossible ideas ? ” 

“ I haven’t realized any of them yet, Laura,” said Milly, 
looking across the gulf between them with a wistful memory 
of the uninformed girlhood which was revived by the 
sight of her old familiar friend. 

“ Will you come now just to glance in upon poor mamma, 


312 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Milly ? She regrets so her inability to welcome you in a 
better fashion, but she is completely prostrated by one of 
her nervous headaches. We shall be quite by ourselves 
to-night. To-morrow there is to be a dinner in your honor. 
Prepare to reveal.” 

“ I wonder if it would not be more just to attribute my 
vaunted contempt for the ministry of artificial beauty to my 
humble surroundings rather than to my lofty soul,” said Milly 
wistfully, as, with Mrs. Schuyler and Laura, she awaited the 
dinner guests on the following evening. Laura’s maid had 
attired the simply-bred Millicent in a soberly modish black 
tulle gown, which became suddenly splendid as the noble 
arms and neck emerged in white beauty from the low corsage. 
The making of this toilet had been a far more complicated 
affair under the hands of the voluble Frenchwoman than 
when it was solely due to Milly’s own exertions; but she had 
given but an absent-minded attention to what her tire-woman 
regarded as a vital process, her eyes leaving her own charm- 
ing reflection in the mirror to wander over the room. It 
was all pink and silver, like a bon-bon box. The rose velvet 
and Irish lace that draped doors, windows, and the alcoves 
for the similarly canopied bed were reflected in the many 
mirrors with their wreathing frames of Dresden china roses, 
and the light was flung down on the grand luxuriant young 
figure from countless waxen tapers in silver candle-sticks. 
Now the three ladies stood in a splendid apartment, rich dull 
tints setting out with every device of fantastic drapery and 
frescoed background, the numberless odd and beautiful 
shapes in porcelain and silver and bronze which adorned it. 

“I wonder if you know how beautiful your home is, 
Laura ? ” 

“ It is not at all a consistent house. Mamma let me exer- 
cise my own sweet will in the decorations. It was dreadful 
when we went away, all brocatelle and moquette flowers, and 


VANITY FAIR. 


313 

gilt and rose-wood fruit, like a nightmare of a horticultural 
exhibition. There were some good pictures in the gallery, and 
some good marbles in the hall, but the living rooms were 
frightful. Tyler was in charge of the transformation, and he 
wanted to express a harmonious idea through the entire dwell- 
ing, as far as the architecture, which is neither new nor old 
enough to be artistic, would permit. But I did not choose to 
live in a symphony ; and each room expresses a different, 
incorrect, unwarranted fancy of my own." 

“ I’m glad you had your way.” 

Milly sat quiet after that, toying with the huge cluster of 
hyacinths at her breast. This democrat, by birth and con- 
viction, took kindly to the purples. She fell to making 
excuses for that privileged class, the very existence of which 
she had deemed a wrong. Old stock arguments, which had 
always seemed as stiff and sapless as the dry stalks of last 
year’s flowers, suddenly became alive with blossoming 
growth. How much beauty could these chosen people 
bring into life ! Artists might be stimulated to finer fancies 
by the guerdon of gold, which was their living also. Poetry 
could lighten the prose of daily life. A million indus- 
tries, feeding the millions, were called into life and sustained 
by the luxuries of wealth. If all were brought down to the 
necessity of winning each an equal portion of bread, what 
would become of art and literature, and the thousand refine- 
ments and graces of a complex, unequal civilization ? Ah, 
but these were bought with a fearful price ! A sharp recol- 
lection of the Sons of Reform stung Milly. She had heard 
dreadful things that night, and the reading and observation 
of later years had taught her that some of them, warped and 
blackened in the telling, were dreadfully true. What would 
become of society if those men and others like them were 
turned loose upon it, men of savage instincts, but sharpened 
intelligence ? How far was society responsible for these 

* 


3M 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


creatures and their condition ? Poor sweet half-hearted 
Milly! Unable to take the simplest pleasure simply, swayed 
by conflicting influences, identifying herself with each group 
that the kaleidoscope of life rolled her into, not content to 
rest in any condition without justifying it to herself, yet 
always falling short in the attempt — such souls as hers waik 
the earth, inglorious martyrs fretting under the martyr’s 
cross, never earning the martyr’s crown. 

“ Oh it’s all so right and it’s all so wrong,” she said to 
herself with a little mental moan; “ it’s dreadful to be con- 
servative in taste and radical in principle. I wish I were like 
Miss Brisbane, who wants the whole world turned into a 
vast community where every thing from love to shoe strings 
will be meted out in equal portions, and anyone aspiring to 
honors of wealth be sentenced to penal servitude until a 
better frame of mind is induced ; or Ida Heathcote, who 
says we get each one just what we deserve out of life, and 
that the possession of diamonds indicates the worth to wear 
them. They are both wrong, I suppose, but they have the 
courage of their convictions. Well, so would I have if I 
were not convicted in so many quarters. It’s a trial to have 
an impartial mind. Oh, if I could only find the right thing 
to do and be, and do and be it with all my might.” 

It was a very grave face that was lifted at the sound of 
Laura’s voice. 

“ Ah, Adrian. I knew you would be faithfully first. 
You shall be rewarded by becoming Miss Barron’s oldest 
acquaintance in New York, except ourselves. Milly, let me 
present my cousin, Mr. Van Sittart.” 

Van Sittart’s smile was delightfully agreeable, with its 
characteristic blending of perfect ease and appealing shy- 
ness, and Milly was glad when, having been led in to dinner 
some little time later by a very fair, speechless and 
immaculate person, to find him her other neighbor, 


VANITY FAIR . 


315 


“ How lovely it is here,” she said, smiling up at him 
frankly. She had dined on the previous evening informally 
with Laura in a pretty, gayly frescoed breakfast-room, and 
had not seen the dining-room before. It was circular in 
shape, very lofty, and the arched oaken ceiling and the 
side walls were rough with intricate carving. The deep 
orange and sage of the curiously wrought hangings glittered 
with lines of iridescent light. The round table was lit by 
a myriad of parti-colored tapers in branching candelabra, 
and the soft wax light fell on the gold and silver and many- 
hued china of the service ; on the deep color of wines and 
fruits and heaped sweetmeats ; on the glowing perfumed 
mass of rare flowers piled in the center and clustered by each 
card, on the brilliant toilets of the pretty women and the 
gay liveries of the attendants. It was all so light and 
bright and happy. 

Milly’s involuntary exclamation of delight pleased Van 
Sittart. 

“ It is a handsome room,” he said. “ The result of 
Laura’s taste is always agreeable, if it is condemned as 
eccentric and incorrect by the authorities.” 

“ I wonder if it is wrong to enjoy it all so much ? ” 

“ Wrong ? ” 

“ I can not help loving beautiful things, sumptuous 
surroundings. My imagination must have its vulgar side, 
for it is always so powerfully appealed to by extravagant 
luxury, and I care so much for effect in every thing. And 
it is horribly selfish when one thinks of the terrible under- 
side to all this social tapestry.” 

“ Population is — ” 

“ Please do not talk political economy to me,” said Milly, 
half-playfully, half-earnestly raising her hands to her ears. 
“ I know you are going to quote Malthus, or some one 
equally unpleasant, There are always such effective 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


316 

weapons in the hands of my friendly enemies. I know now 
that some of my dreams will never come true, that univer- 
sal equality is mentally, morally, physically impossible, but 
I — surely there might be a more even distribution of this 
world’s goods.” And all this before the oysters were 
eaten ! 

Van Sittart was amused by Milly, as Haslett had been 
four years ago. At twenty-two she was much like the 
Milly of eighteen. But he was conscious of a feeling that 
had been quite absent from Haslett’s mind. He was 
touched. 

“ Fust visit to New Yawk, Miss Bahon ? ” said her other 
neighbor. 

“ I have been here before, though never to stay for any 
length of time.” 

“ Think you shall like it ? ” 

“ I am quite sure I shall.” 

“ Be at Mrs. Corlinear’s ball with Miss Schuyler, I sup- 
pose ? ” 

“ I believe we are going.” 

“ Fond of dancing ? ” 

“ I don’t know how.” 

“ Pity — for us, for us, you know.” 

“ Thanks,” said Milly, laughing, “ you might be more 
pitiable if I did. I live in Goverick, you know.” 

“ Ah, yes, yes. Govahick is a great place. Never was 
there but know fellows who have been there. Lots of 
pretty girls, I believe. Girls have a better time there than 
they do here.” Milly noticed a slight shade on Van 
Sittart’s face as she turned to him. 

“ Have you ever been in Goverick, Mr. Van Sittart ? ” 

“ Yes,” he answered briefly. 

“ Do you feel it incumbent on you to deplore my fate in 
living there ? ” 


VANITY FAIT, 


3i 7 


“ Certainly not. Though I know very little of the city 
and nothing of the people. I only went there to see one 
man.” 

“ I trust I shall not be like the English gentleman who 
asked my uncle Elkins if he could not send one of his office 
boys on a little errand to San Francisco, and who sub- 
sequently married the lady who said to a Boston woman, 

‘ Oh, you are an American ! Then you must know my 
friend Mrs. Dennick ; she lives in Dakota.’ But I would 
like to ask who the one man is. Mutual acquaintances are 
such a help in forming new ones.” 

“ His name is Haslett.” 

“I know him very well,” said Milly coloring. “His 
wife has been one of my intimate friends.” 

“ I understand that she is rather older than he.” 

“ A few years only. And she is a very beautiful woman.” 

“ She is handsome, certainly. How well that Russian 
friend of Laura’s speaks English.” 

Milly acquiesced in his evident desire to change the 
subject. “ Most educated Russians do, I believe, and Laura 
would put anyone at ease in the most unfamiliar language.” 

“ I see that you return to a degree Laura’s unbounded 
affection for you. I am very fond of Laura. I used to 
carry her up and down the hall and gallery here when I 
was a sturdy lad and she a neuralgic little child.” Milly 
looked at him with some surprise. She had thought him 
Laura’s junior by some years, but as she studied him with 
keener eyes she saw many threads of early silver, not easily 
discernible amid the fair waves of his hair ; and certain lines 
about the very sweet stern mouth which told that time had 
been'longer with him than the youthful grace of his appear- 
ance had led her to believe.' 

“ You are the cousin whom Laura used to quote at 
school,” she said smiling. 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


3i8 

“Very probably. I like to have her quote me. Mrs. 
Schuyler is my nearest living relative, my father’s second 
cousin, with the exception of a dear old aunt on the distaff 
side of the house whom you will doubtless meet. I have 
very few belonging to me, and I like to be claimed and 
quoted.” 

“ 1 have the advantage of you there,” said Milly gayly. 
“ I am rich in relatives. I possess every known variety of 
kinsman and woman.” 

“ That is something to be grateful for,” said the young 
man. 

“ Moderately,” responded Milly, with a smile that softened 
the word. 

She listened, with the smile still on her lips, to the distant 
melody that floated in from the music-room, the waves of 
delightful sound skillfully subdued to that point where they 
seemed to float beneath the conversation and bear it up 
without ingulfing it. The laughter-freighted words of the 
guests danced merrily along on it, and Milly caught a 
phrase now and then. It was nothing very wise or very 
new that she heard. Uncle Jo and Aunt Lena might have 
thought as these people were thinking, but they certainly 
would have expressed their thoughts in a different fashion. 
It was all so soft, so smooth, so pretty. Life under the 
v conditions represented here was apparently worth the liv- 
ing. But how about the many to whom the pretty tale of a 
day’s life here would sound like the wildest romance, or 
perhaps a bitter truth to serve as added fuel to that fire of 
class-hatred smoldering, yet ready to burst into fierce life 
in the breast of the great denied multitude ? Into her 
thought stole another contradiction ; this time the memory 
of the pet poem of her girlhood, of all sensitive girlhood 
She thought of Romney Leigh when he said of himself 
that he had torn up the violets to find worms at the roots 


VANITY FAIT. 


319 


tor the open mouths of hungry birds. Was she, too, anxious 
to spoil all the purple bloom ? 

“ Hunger is a hard thing," she said aloud. 

Her neighbor, not Van Sittart, started. 

“ I beg your pardon, Miss Barron. Has the footman 
neglected you ? Shall I speak to him ? What would you 
like ? ” 

Milly laughed merrily. “ Oh, no indeed. I want noth- 
ing, thank you. Hunger is a word out of place here. I 
was thinking aloud, a very uncomfortable trick of mine.” 

“ Not so sure of that,” said the immaculate one, relapsing 
into the manner from which the gentlemanly instinct had 
wakened him at the thought that he might be of service to 
a lady. “ Benefit to the rest of us, undoubtedly, in your 
case, but the world would be a noisy place if we all thought 
aloud.” 

“And I am not so sure of that,” said Van Sittart, with a 
gleam in his eye that Milly did not miss. 

“ Have you ever been in Central Park, Miss Barron ? ” 
he asked, resorting to the first suggested inanity for the 
sake of engrossing again those clear looks. 

“ Twice, years ago. The last time I was there I sat in 
state in a little wagon and was drawn about by a team of 
goats.” 

“ You must make your next triumphal procession there in 
a more ambitious fashion. But will you not walk first with 
me ? There are really some bits of genuine if insipid pret- 
tiness which are not encountered in driving.” 

“But may I?” asked Milly, simply. “Laura says a 
chaperon is necessary on all occasions in New York.” 

“There are blessed exceptions. If you drive with me a 
chaperon adds to the effect certainly. If you ride, a 
groom will suffice. But we may walk or patronize the street' 
cars unattended.” 


320 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


“ Then I shall like to walk with you very much. I believe 
all country people are taken to Central Park. But please 
do not consider us quite unaware of the chaperon as a 
social factor in Goverick. We do use them at subscription 
balls and public receptions, but we attend theaters and 
musicales and cotillons without them.” 

“ It might be pleasanter as well as simpler, I should think.” 

“ Well — that is a vexed question. Your social system 
here is complicated, elegant, dignified, growing daily more 
akin to that of older civilizations. But the old way had a 
simple dignity of its own, I think. Do you ever read 
novels like ‘ The Minister’s Wooing,’ one of Mrs. Stowe’s 
earlier works ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Ah, then you miss some pretty pictures of what life was 
like in this country a hundred years ago. There was a 
purity and simplicity in the unrestricted, primitive social 
existence then that we have not replaced with any thing 
better. But I am not carping at social custom as I find it 
here and now. Those were different days. Life was hard 
and stern and rather terrible with all its sweetness. All the 
conditions are altered now. America is not primitive any 
more, and that society which was like the Garden of Eden 
before the fall in its innocence of social improprieties has 
long since evolved into something vast, complicated, and 
much more difficult to arrange to one’s satisfaction. People 
are enlightened enough now to abuse their privileges. Since 
the old is hopelessly lost, we had best cultivate the new to 
the utmost. But Goverick is a survival.” 

“ That surely entitles it to respect, since the conditions of 
survival are known.” 

“ Oh, it is a matter of self-respect to respect all survivals, 
since if we did not belong to that order ourselves we should 
pot be here.” 


VANITY FAIT. 


3 21 


u You give me a reason for rejoicing in my own fitness, 
and that of the ancestors who determined it.” 

“ That is very nice,” said Milly, who owed her apprecia- 
tion of subtle compliments to Haslett, and who had yet to 
learn from a less perplexing source that subtlety and sin- 
cerity are not necessarily incompatible. 

“ Do you like Adrian ? ” asked Eaura that night, in the 
course of one of those dressing-gown confabulations for 
which young ladies have become famous. 

“ Very much. What a fascinating mingling of profound 
deference and protecting kindness there is in his manner ! ” 
“ Every one likes him,” said Laura with a smothered 
sigh. “ He has the sweetest nature, and strong as sweet. I 
see the strength, though I don’t understand it. I should 
grow bitter and intolerant and generally detestable if treach- 
ery darkened my life. But Adrian is like the people in 
tracts who hate the sin and love the sinner. He has not 
lost his faith in human nature. I suppose it is because he 
has so much simplicity with all his science, and what Aunt 
Amabel calls ‘ sweet reasonableness ’.” 

“ Has he met with treachery then ? ” 

“ Ah, the blackest. But I should not have spoken ; no 
one knows of it but mamma and our lawyer, Mr. Car- 
ruthers. We should not have known if mamma had not 
looked so much like a picture of Adrian’s father, and been 
supposed to cherish an unrequited affection for him in her 
remote youth. But he will tell you all about himself some 
day, Milly, I’m sure of it. It will be the next best thing 
selfishly considered ; the best, broadly viewed ! ” 

“ Dear Laura, what is it ? What do you mean ? I do not 
understand you. And are you angry with me that you 
speak so vehemently ? ” 

“ No. I love you.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 


FAMILIAR FACES. 


IFE for many days and weeks after that took on a gala 



I j aspect for Milly. She had read of the great world ; 
now she saw something of it. She heard noble music, she 
saw great pictures, she beheld famous actors triumphant in 
renowned plays, she fingered rare books, she touched and 
used bits of china and porcelain that were worth a king’s 
ransom. But all these were like old friends, though she 
came in actual contact with them for the first time, thanks 
to those heavenly ministers, the great authors, who bring 
hidden lives into communication with the wide world. 

The new, bewildering life was the life of society. She 
wakened each day to find her -footsteps followed by deft 
service, to be perpetually arranged by cunning hands in the 
daintiest garments selected from her simple wardrobe ; to 
find herself talked about, if not as a beauty, as “ so 
effective ” ; to be besieged by great baskets of strange, 
brilliant flowers from young men whose admiration, being 
chiefly of the speechless order, expressed itself in this 
agreeable fashion ; to move from one beautiful scene to 
another like a series of animated pictures ; to be grace- 
fully fallen in love with and generally invited, to recognize 
half wistfully, the immense advantage of Miss Schuyler’s 
sponsorship ; to be elated like a girl and saddened like a 
woman, and, at times, to subscribe to the doctrine of expe- 
diency like a man. 

Laura had intended to place her friend well, and there 


FAMILIAR FACES. 


323 


was nothing in the present constitution of society to frus- 
trate any intention on the part of Miss Schuyler. 

“ I am more than satisfied, Milly,” she said one evening, 
as they returned from a theater party, where two of the 
most beautiful girls of New York had spent the evening in 
uninterrupted enjoyment of the drama, while the gentlemen 
had clustered around Milly’s chair in the corner of the 
box, courteous to the other ladies, but devoted only to 
her. “ You are an immense success.” 

“ That sounds like a society novel.” 

“Well, why not? Novels are supposed to photograph 
the times — present the tableau of the age, I suppose you 
would say. Oh, Milly ! I wish you would let me say a 
a horribly ill-bred thing.” 

“ You couldn’t, Laura.” 

“Yes, I could. My curiosity must be satisfied at the 
expense of my breeding. It really is an intellectual curi- 
osity, and I think you will pardon it on that ground. I’ve 
noticed that you will always forgive any thing which indi- 
cates the possession of intelligence, and my slow develop- 
ment in that direction has always distressed you. You are 
always trying to justify me to yourself and give a satisfac- 
tory explanation of your undoubted liking forme.” 

“ Your acuteness is certainly developing, Laura, though 
as certainly in the wrong direction. I should find every 
reason for loving you if love happened to be in the class of 
things which require a reason. But say your indelicate 
say ; I want to see what you can do in that line.” 

“ Well, then, you are ‘ good form ’ to your finger tips.” 

“ That is not in worse taste than the majority of broad 
compliments.” 

“ And you are getting used to them. But that isn’t all, 
Milly, I want it explained. Ah, I knew you would color. 
But put Mr. and Mrs. Barron out of the question, please. 


3 2 4 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Your mother is a sweet little woman and a natural lady, and 
your father is a rather elegant man ; you certainly are not 
cursed with detrimental parents. But you have told me of 
the extreme simplicity of your life, and I’ve met some of 
your relatives at your house. Excuse me, dear, but I can’t 
account for you. You are as much at home wherever you 
are placed as the regulation young princess.” 

“That is true enough, Laura. I wish it wasn’t. I’m a 
fraud ; nothing more nor less than a moral chameleon. I 
take the color of each spot where I fall. And this is the 
pleasantest one yet ; pleasant to the point of demoraliza- 
tion. There has always been something to endure in the 
other places where I’ve found myself, something that bore 
evident relation to the toiling life of this wrong world. 
But here ! the objective life is so charming that one for- 
gets to look within.” 

“ Do you think there is nothing to endure here ? ” asked 
Laura, with rather a wintry smile. 

%i For you, who were born to it all, and know of nothing 
worse, possibly.” 

“ Tell Adrian that.” 

“Why?” 

“ He will tell you why.” 

One night, not long after, at a brilliant dinner where she 
and Laura were the only unmarried women present, Milly 
was rather amazed to meet Ferrard. The surprise was 
mutual. They had not met except in the most casual man- 
ner for years. Perhaps Ferrard’s surprise held something 
more personal than Milly’s. He was surprised less at the 
meeting than at her. She wore the black gown, but the low 
corsage of silk and tulle was replaced by a similar one of 
black velvet, unrelieved by a line of white. The rich 
sobriety of the material suited the splendid figure and deli- 
cate bloom, and the only touch of color in this grave 


familiar faces. 


325 

toilet was supplied by a mass of golden brown forced 
marigolds, which repeated at her breast the deep tints of 
her wonderful hair. She had been a dubiously charming child 
when Ferrard had last looked at her with noting interest. 
She was a magnificent woman now. The pretty excitability 
of manner which had attracted Haslett and repelled him 
had given place to an assured grace which was saved from 
conventionality by sincere cordiality. Ferrard found him- 
self noticing every thing about her with a curious minute- 
ness and sense of novelty, even to the wrinkled, tan-colored 
gloves which she drew off, and the chatelaine of great, clear 
topazes at her waist — Laura’s last birthday gift — from 
which a cluster of inscrutable trifles depended. 

“ I did not know you were in New York,” he said, in the 
conventional manner that always set so oddly on him. 

“ I have been here nearly a month. I am with Miss 
Schuyler. Are you staying in the city, Mr. Ferrard ? ” 

“ Yes. I am Mr. Reverdy’s guest.” 

It was Mr. Reverdy’s table at which they were being 
entertained, Mr. Reverdy — always referred to as John 
Winthrop Reverdy — was a man high in the social world, for 
which Ferrard cared not at all. He was also a man high in 
the political world, for which Ferrard cared greatly. He 
was among those who perceived and acknowledged Fer- 
rard’s power, which Ferrard knew perfectly well. He also 
knew that John Winthrop Reverdy intended to make use of 
him, and did not in the least object, as he had a similar 
intention with regard to Mr. Reverdy, and was quite will- 
ing to exchange honorable service for serviceable honor. 

Milly quickly read in his glance that his estimate of her 
had suddenly changed. She did not, however, recognize 
the fact that the change was partly due to the fact that she 
was no longer regarded as a potential calamity in Haslett’s 
life, or that Ferrard’s interest in Haslett had lost its vitality. 


326 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Do you like New York ?” she asked, simply enough. 

“ Yes,” answered Ferrard. “ I mean to live here some 
day.” 

“ Soon ? ” 

“ No. I have much work in Goverick still unfinished.” 

“ But all that is preliminary, 1 suppose ? ” 

“ No,” said Ferrard, “ I have never been able to regard 
any thing in the light of mere preparation. It is all a part 
of the living. People never succeed in life who attend to 
any thing — the smallest matter — in a by-the-way fashion.” 

“ Suppose circumstances make it by-the-way ?” 

“ Circumstances only control those who allow them to do 
so,” said Ferrard, with smiling arrogance. 

“ Ah, do not say that ! ” cried Milly, suddenly stricken 
with a sense of sad earnestness in the midst of her holiday 
mood. 

“ Certainly I say it. I have no patience with these peo- 
ple who say of one, ‘ He had the promise of greatness,’ of 
another, ‘ He might have succeeded had things been other- 
wise.’ One is what one does. No man ever possessed the 
possibility of success who did not succeed.” 

“That is a hard saying — for us who fail.” 

“ That is nonsense,” said Ferrard, impolitely. “If you 
fail, you certainly deserve it, but I think you are premature 
in enrolling yourself among the ranks of the unsuccessful.” 

“ I have done nothing that I have wished and tried to 
do.” 

“ It is probably just as well.” 

This, after the language of adulation to which Milly had 
become accustomed of late, was discomposing. She looked 
up with a heightened, resentful color. But Ferrard’s daz- 
zling smile was disarming. 

“ If this is to be taken as an indication of your political 
methods, Mr. Ferrard,” she said, in a softer tone than she 


FAMILIAR FACES. 


327 


had intended using, “ it will be ratherthrough force of arms 
than moral suasion.” 

“ I have offended you,” said Ferrard. “ I am sorry, but 
I can’t recall 'my words. You have received the education 
of most young women in your position ; you have an omni- 
vorous literary taste and an acute, unguided intelligence. 
If it were not for that last I should be disposed to regard 
the carrying out of your ideas as harmless to yourself and 
pleasant to others. As it is, you are morally certain to base 
your actions on a false' view of life, and mercifully sure to 
fail in your endeavors to carry your mistaken theories into 
practice. You feel too much to reason clearly, and you 
reason too much to trust to the simple instincts which carry 
ordinary women through life in safety.” 

“ You remind me of a clergyman whom I once heard 
declare that a woman with a head was a good thing and a 
woman with a heart a better, but that they didn’t combine 
well.” 

“ Perhaps he wasn’t as far out of the way as men of his 
cloth generally are.” 

“ Perhaps not. Shall I tell you why / think him rather 
right ? ” 

“ If you please.” 

“ Because women always want to act on their convictions.” 

“Now it is your turn to be hard on us,” said Ferrard, 
ironically. 

“ I am so used to being laughed at in my family circle, 
Mr. Ferrard, that I have grown impervious to sarcasm. 
What I mean is this : men perceive when a thing is theoret- 
ically right, and also when an attempt to put it into imme- 
diate practice would produce dire confusion. So they do 
that which is expedient, rather than that which is ideally 
good. But a woman’s conscience won’t let her stop where 
you stop. It may be partly due to her inexperience, but it 


3 2 8 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


is very largely attributable to the urgent necessity she feels 
to justify her faith by her works." 

“ That is an excellent apology for the ladies — I beg their 
pardon, citizenesses — who played such a prominent part in 
the French Revolution.” 

“ Indeed, I think it is^the only one. Talk of the conser- 
vatism of women ! Why, Mr. Ferrard, the real radical capa- 
city does not exist, comparatively speaking, in a man. The 
only reason why women are popularly supposed to be, and 
apparently are, the conservative sex, is because the great 
mass of womankind is so uninformed. A man may have 
many facts in his possession quietly locked away in an inner 
chamber of his consciousness, and wait with a curious mix- 
ture of dogged patience and calculating shrewdness for the 
time to come when he can safely and advantageously use 
them. Give a woman those same facts, convince her that 
there is even one wrong left unrighted in the world, and she 
can no more help rushing to the rescue than she can when 
she hears a stray baby crying.” 

u I should like to know on which side you are fighting, 
Miss Barron.” 

“ So should I,” said Milly, with a forlorn laugh. “ I’ve 
wanted to know that in so many contests. But I think in 
this matter my desires lean to the side of fewer privileges 
and more rights. Give us a chance to behave better, and 
we will.” 

“ It is not I — nor men in general — who withhold the 
chance.” 

“ I know that too well. Women in general, are like women 
in particular; when they want a thing, they always get it. If 
they had wanted equal rights, they would have had them long 
ago. It has been a curious fact, in my experience, that the 
women, who, in private life are the most domineering, 
absolute in their homes, rulers of their fathers, sons and 


FAMILIAR FACES. 


3 2 9 


husbands, are the very ones who make the loudest outcry 
against the unwomanliness of claiming the public rights 
which would really restrict the exercise of their abused 
privileges. I have never yet known a declared suffragist, 
who was not the meekest and most deferential of women 
in the conjugal relation. This is of course a matter of pri- 
vate experience, but after all, that is what we are guided by." 

“ You have no choice, but to view matters from your 
own standpoint. But, bear in mind, that it is rather an 
isolated position. You will make a great mistake, if you 
regard yourself as a representative woman.” 

“ Since when have you arrived at this intimate knowl- 
edge of my character ? ” 

“ Since we sat down to dinner.” 

Before she left, Milly had accorded to Ferrard that per- 
mission to call upon her at Mrs. Schuyler’s house, which 
might have been said to be demanded, rather than requested; 
and after that they sat down to many dinners together. 
Ferrard became a favorite with gentle Mrs. Schuyler who 
was afraid of him, and enjoyed it. Laura frankly detested 
him, yet encouraged his visits. 

“What a superb creature that man is, Milly ! I hate him, 
but I can’t see him too often. If you and he are samples 
of what Goverick can bring forth, I shall persuade mamma 
to go there and live.” 

“Mr Ferrard is not, strictly speaking, a Goverick product. 
He was born and bred in a country town on Long Island.” 

“No wonder Long Island is growing in grace and the 
knowledge of the world. He would verify the dreariest 
region.” 

“ Long Island isn’t dreary and Mr. Ferrard doesn’t care 
about it. He is not going for the sake of auld -lang syne to 
devote himself to making the waste places blossom like the 
rose,” 


330 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“Not he ! He would listen to the crash of matter and 
perch himself on the wreck of worlds undisturbed if only 
that vast field for action, his own interest, was left to 
him.” 

“ Laura, you are growing venomous ! ” 

“You’d forgive me if you saw what I see, and knew the 
reason why.” 

Ferrard’s was not the only face belonging to the old 
times that met Milly’s eyes. One evening, at a great 
reception, she became conscious of a gaze of sweet inten- 
sity directed at her. A feeling of genuine pleasure, 
marred by a recollection of sick distaste moved her, as she 
stepped forward with a quick exclamation. 

“ Mrs. Fotheringham ! ” 

Mrs. Fotheringham held out her hand. 

“ You are M*iss Schuyler’s friend, Miss Barron,” she 
said with gentle courtesy. “ I am very glad to meet you, 
my dear.” 

“ I am so happy to see you again — ” 

“ You have doubtless heard of me, from my nephew, 
Adrian Van Sittart, as well as from Laura, who will call her- 
self my niece, although the tie between us is not of 
blood.” 

“ Don’t you remember me, Mrs. Fotheringham ? ” asked 
Milly, bewildered. 

Mrs. Fotheringham smiled at the open wondering face. 
Milly had rather abruptly left a gay group to join her, 
and the two stood alone among strangers. 

“My dear,” said the elder lady, “this must be our first 
meeting. It is better for you — a young girl — that it should 
be so. I have learned many things of that place where I 
first saw you. You should never have been there.” 

“ Laura knows — ” 

“ Such knowledge is safe with Laura.” 


FAMILIAR FACES. 


331 


Milly was vaguely troubled as an ancient beau 
approached, and Mrs. Fotheringham took up and tossed to 
her such a conversational ball as could only be used on a first 
conventional meeting. Why should not all things be open 
and clear ? She had done nothing shameful, and there was 
suggestion of shame in this deception, which seemed to be 
considered necessary, in renewing her acquaintance with 
Mrs. Fotheringham. She had never seen her since the 
evening of the seance at the sanatorium until now. She 
was too uninstructed in small matters of social etiquette to 
regard the inclosed card, engraved with the address and 
reception day, in Mrs. Fotheringham’s letter of warning, as 
an invitation to continue the strangely formed acquain- 
tance. She had rarely visited New York since that 
memorable time, and had this been otherwise, her recollec- 
tion of that place had become so fraught with shuddering 
dread, that it was doubtful if she would have sought any 
association which would more vividly recall it. Yet she 
was glad to see Mrs. Fotheringham again, now that her 
lovely face came directly before her, and a shadowy flitting 
resemblance to Adrian Van Sittart heightened its charm 
for her. 

For they had become great friends in these weeks. The 
calm intensity of Van Sittart’s nature was pleasant to 
Milly’s fervent fitful soul. She wondered much at certain 
of Laura’s words concerning him. The quiet, consistent 
dignity of his thought and bearing was lightened by a sweet 
sunniness that told nothing of the shadows which fall with 
the endurance of treachery. He spoke little of himself, 
and Milly, with whom the study of character was a 
passion that excused her tendency to personalities, was 
often disappointed that his extreme interest in her words 
about herself never took the form of reciprocated con- 
fidence. 


33 2 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


They took the walk to Central Park, and as they strolled 
up the glittering length of Fifth Avenue, the old class prob- 
lem that was apparently destined to dash all Milly’s enjoy- 
ment with the bitterness of uneasy conscience, came up 
again. The rolling pomp of equipages, freighted with 
richly attired, discontented looking women passed them. 
They met bevies of pretty girls, trim in tailor-made gowns, 
their piquant faces smiling above great knots of flowers 
fastened just above their slim waists, and spreading over 
the pretty busts until the top-most blossom brushed with 
a light caress the dimples in the dainty chins. Sometimes 
these charming creatures were accompanied by young 
men, who kept pace at their sides with a stiffness that 
would seem to indicate that walking was a most unfamiliar 
exercise. They carried their arms in a manner which 
inevitably aroused, in the uninitiated beholders, a painful 
suspicion of their modish coats, as garments of painful 
tightness, originally designed for smaller men. Many gave 
evidence of a riotous imagination, employed in the design- 
ing of their walking sticks, and though nearly all sought to 
veil their natural expression by an assumed vacuity, 
fondly believed to be truly transatlantic, the shrewdness of 
American sons of hard-working fathers, and pioneer 
grandfathers would flash out of the eyes that refused to 
languish with the weariness of an older civilization. Not 
infrequently, these young gentlemen were followed by dogs. 
Dogs that looked like unfinished Astrakhan muffs; dogs that 
resembled tangled rolls of soiled yarn; dogs with the simple 
massive dignity of the St. Bernard breed ; dogs with the 
melancholy impudence of the pug ; dogs with the watchful 
grace of the wise, faithful setter. For each and all of 
these, Milly had the smile of a true dog-lover, but she>shrank 
a little, fearless as she was in the presence of these four 
footed friends, when a huge, gaunt, lowering animal passed, 


FAMILIAR FACES. 


333 


looking furtively out from wolfish eyes, showing a cruel 
gleam of fang-like teeth. 

“ Oh, what a dreadful creature ! ” she cried, as the iron- 
gray shape approached. Van Stittart exchanged a friendly 
greeting with the owner of the dog, a tall fair man, and 
smiled as he turned to Milly. 

“ Pruyn would not agree with you," he said. “ He 
brought that dog from Russia, and he paid two thousand 
dollars for the privilege of its society.’' 

“ I think he is a wicked man ! ” said Milly, with sudden 
vehemence. 

“ Oh, the creature is perfectly manageable by him ; it 
really loves him, and he never permits his servants to take 
it out. There is no danger of its harming anyone." 

“ Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that. But two thousand dol- 
lars, Mr. Van Sittart ! Think what a fine year’s living that 
would give to poor young couples the world over. If it were 
for a work of art that was destined to feed the sense of 
beauty in many generations — ’’ 

“ Or for a length of lace ? ’’ 

“ I confess to a weakness for lace. I have all the expen- 
sive tastes. But I don’t own it without shame, and I 
hope I shouldn’t buy the lace if I had the money. But that 
great, hideous, sullen animal ! Oh, Mr. VanSittart, it 
surely is an arbitrary value that is set on a possession like 
that. The dog may have his use in his own country, but 
here, in New York, on Fifth Avenue, he is certainly out of 
place, unnecessary, and an example of the distorted 
employment of surplus capital." 

“ Perhaps Mr. Pruyn might think the same if he were to 
see a flounce of Venetian point on your gown." 

“ He never would see it. And I think the love for a beau- 
tiful gossamer web like that is less an acquired taste than 
that indicated by making a pet of a wild beast." 


334 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Many of our best tastes are acquired,” said Van Sittart, 
amused and a little delighted by this specimen of feminine 
inconsequence in earnest Milly. “ Probably Pruyn sees 
beauties in that extremely unpleasant beast to which we are 
blind only because of our ignorance in such matters. The 
dog’s personal appearance is against him, from our point 
of view, and very probably Pruyn would regard your length 
of lace as a very imperfect piece of cloth, while I know you 
would regard certain pages in natural history which are 
enchanting to me, with horror.” 

“You are bound to defend your friend.” 

“ I do not defend him in that character. I know of no 
one who has a better right to spend his money as he pleases 
than Pierre Pruyn. He has worked like a dray-horse to 
get it.” 

“ I thought he represented one of your first families.” 

“ He represented it on an infinitesimal income until ten 
years ago, when his own energy and wit developed his few 
thousands into many millions. That man worked for two 
years as a common factory hand in a wretched little Austrian 
village, in order to learn the secret used in manufacturing a 
commodity important in the business he has adopted.” 

• “ Did he learn it ? ” 

“ The dog is witness to the fact that he did.” 

“ What does he do now ? ” 

“ He works as hard as ever from eight in the morning 
until two in the afternoon, and then — well, then he plays 
as hard as he works.” 

“ I think I admire him.” 

“ In spite of the dog ? ” 

“ In spite of the dog.” 

“ I am glad of that ; Pierre is too fine a fellow to be 
included in general condemnation.” 

“ But indeed I do not mean to indulge in general con- 


FAMILIAR FACES. 


335 


demnations, and I really think I use the condemnatory tone 
only as a moral tonic for myself. It would be very easy for 
me to find myself enervated in the presence of all these 
luxuries. You see, I stand between two classes, Mr. Van 
Sittart. I can appreciate through my more cultivated 
instincts the beauties — wide-spreading in their influences — 
brought by money into the life of the wealthy. I can 
understand, through the slight deprivations encountered in 
my own simple lot, the constant sorrow of denial which 
afflicts the poor.” 

A quick flush came on Van Sittart’s face. 

“ You should not know the meaning of the deprivation,” 
he said, in a low hurried voice. 

“ Ah, yes, I should ! It is good to be one of the great 
middle class, Mr. Van Sittart. It is the only point where 
one can gain a consistent width of sympathy. And I am 
in excellent company. Those who speak words of healing 
to the nations must stand where they can look both ways 
and possess relations in both directions.” 

“ I wonder,” said Van Sittart abruptly, “ if your univer- 
sal sympathy can ever condense itself into something spe- 
cial and personal.” 

“ Universal sympathy is but an elaboration of interest in 
the individual.” 

“ Theoretically, yes. Practically, I've often noticed that 
those people who are interested in the welfare of mankind 
care only for the unit as a factor in the mass.” 

“ I don’t see what I’ve done,” said Milly, in a confiden- 
tial, injured tone, “ to make you class me among those dis- 
agreeable persons.” 

Van Sittart laughed. “ Nor do I. I think I was so 
ashamed of my sneaking desire to engross a portion of your 
interest that I sought relief in making you the subject of an 
implied accusation. But you are so divinely pitiful to poor, 


336 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


frustrated humanity that I want to tell you a small frustra- 
tion of my own, and thus claim a portion of that tenderness 
which you so liberally bestow on the race.” 

“ Please tell me,” said Milly, with two shy roses that 
much surprised her, unfolding in her cheeks. 

“ Not now. Another time. May I come on Thursday 
night, and will you give me audience in the green library ? 
Laura tells me that she and her mother are going to that 
sad wedding of Louise Montgomery and Will Markham, 
and that you do not accompany them.” 

“ No one is to be there, I believe, but members of the 
family and the closest intimates. Poor Louise ! how soon 
her bridal-gown will be her shroud ! I shall be at home 
and very glad to see you, Mr. Van Sittart.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


another’s woe. 

T HE green library had been whimsically so christened 
by Laura, because, as she had said, it was a combina- 
tion of yellow and blue, and the name clung to it. It was 
a gay little room, very different from the high, dark, stately 
apartment which was the library proper ; a great, quiet 
space with shelves, rich with carving reaching nearly to the 
distant ceiling, crowded with a motley collection of rare 
books, dim with sober tapestries and solemn with noble 
bronzes and calm marbles. The green library was less the 
place for the student, companioned by the grave thought of 
departed sages, than for the modern sonneteer, tying a bow 
on the guitar which shall presently sound out in tripping 
melody the rhymed praises of his mistress. It was octag- 
onal in shape ; the walls were hung with canary-colored 
silk ; the curtains and portieres were of old blue ; the 
low bookcases of brass which ran around the room were 
curtained with blue, and all the volumes of light literature 
which filled them were clad in dresses of blue or yellow. 
Great blue jars, ornamented with yellow dragons, stood near 
the fire-place, the yellow tiles of which bore scriptural 
studies in blue. The precious trifles which crowded the 
top shelves of the book-cases were all in the same contrast- 
ing colors, and the great screen which made a cozy nook 
for Milly’s lounge by the fire was of yellow Chinese silk 
gayly flowered with blue. 

“ Isn’t this a pretty, ridiculous place ? ” asked Milly, look- 


33§ 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


ing up with a bright nervous smile as the footman admitted 
Adrian to her blue and yellow retreat. 

“ Yes,” he said so gravely that for a moment all the gay 
foolish trifles around them seemed irrelevant. 

“ I think Mrs. Schuyler and Laura may be very late in 
returning,” said Milly, strangely discomposed by the sad 
composure of Van Sittart’s manner. They are going from 
Mrs. Montgomery’s house to some affair which Mrs. Lucas 
gives, and that is Eighty-first Street, you know.” 

“ I am glad,” said Adrian, quietly. 

“ Has any thing troubled you, Mr. Van Sittart ? ” asked 
Milly, in her own voice of cordial sweetness, as she forgot 
her unwonted and inexplicable shyness in her perception of 
a hidden pain beneath that placid surface. 

“ Nothing new. I find it will be harder than I thought to 
drag the old matter to the light again, and yet — I’d do it a 
thpusand times over just to see you a little sorry for me. It 
is not such a very old matter ; not much more than a year 
according to the accepted idea of time, but it seems a century 
to me. Do I seem like a pitiful coward to come begging 
for your compassionate regard in this way ? ” 

“ Indeed, no ! ” said Millicent, very earnestly. 

“ Don’t you know that days come to us all when we are 
reconciled to being a little less than brave, to letting our 
standard sink a little while we rest on the broad sympathy 
of a large nature ? ” 

“ I think I have always been ready to do that,” said 
Milly, only — ” 

“ Only the large nature was not there. See how much 
happier I am than you. But I think I should be able to 
forego the luxury of identifying myself with the poor 
wretches who can’t own two thousand dollar dogs, for the 
sake of sharing with them in your dole of pity even if I did 
not want you to know all about me. Because,” added Van 


ANOTHER'S WOE. 


339 


Sittart gently, misinterpreting the deep flush in her face, “ I 
intend to be of service to you as long as I live, whenever I 
can, wherever you may be. I think I am not presumptuous 
in saying this, since every human being holds the poten- 
tiality of service to another. It is but fair that you should 
know the quality of the spirit that offers you this gratuitous 
devotion.” 

Milly was dumb, and could only wait with a feeling half 
dread, half pleasure for his next words. 

“You know,” said Adrian abruptly,” that I have always 
been addicted to science in a small way.” 

“ Laura told me — ” 

“That I was a cheated Newton, probably; Laura can’t 
tell the truth about those whom she loves. But I had some- 
thing to bear. Destiny knows so well how to strike home. 
I had my sensitive point, and there the blow fell.” 

He had seated himself near Milly, and the light of the 
useless aromatic little fire danced merrily over his thought- 
ful face. The steady sweetness of the mouth was a little 
jarred upon, and the deep eyes were full of that brooding 
intensity which tells of a mind turned inward rather than 
outward. 

“ I see,” said Van Sittart, abruptly, “ that whatever you 
may have known of other emotions, the race-passion, the 
consciousness of human needs, has been the dominating 
factor in your mental existence. When you permitted that 
wide interest to be clouded by your own affairs you were 
tormented by a sense of falling off in yourself.” 

“ Yes,” said Milly, startled at his insight. 

« Then you will understand something of a passion less 
noble, equally uncommon, though more common in char- 
acter than the world at large will admit. Such a passion 
moved me once. It can all be soon told. When I was a 
mere boy, stealing time for my unguided scientific studies 


340 


A S COMMON M OR TA L S. 


as other boys steal it for play, there came to me a revelation 
which determined the course of my life. I saw then, lad as 
I was, light on a matter that had long lain dark to even the 
finer minds among the mass. The angel of annunciation 
visited me and let me know the secret of my vocation. If 
I talk like Aunt Amabel, remember that a lonely man uses 
always the phrases he has heard from some woman when he 
opens his heart. Well — some time I may bore you with 
details, not now. It is enough to say it was a discovery in 
practical chemistry, of which I caught a glimpse in that 
early time, and to the working-out of which I then and there 
dedicated my life. I do not think I worked selfishly. I 
was not moved by the broad humanitarian impulses which 
would have animated you at every step of the way, but I 
would have given my life to succeed. I did give it in a 
measure, for I let all those pleasures for which I have a keen 
appetite slip past me. I toiled night and day. I spent 
much of my money. I lived in and for that problem which 
had waited all through the ages for my solution. At last 
the day came.” 

Van Sittart paused. There was such an extraordinary 
passion vibrating in his simply spoken words that Milly’s 
intense interest found no voice. There was silence in the 
room for a brief space. Then Adrian spoke again in the 
old, gentle, alert fashion. 

“ It always makes a fool of me to think of that day ; it 
was so well worth living for.” 

“ You succeeded ? ” whispered Milly, tremulously. 

“ I succeeded. I have a right to be glad when I 
remember that. You will like to know that my success 
gave to the world something of daily practical use, for you 
have taught me that the true poet is also the utilitarian.” 

“ But when will you give it to the world ? ” 

“ It has been given.” 


ANOTHER'S WOE . 


341 


“ But—' 

“ But you have never heard my name in connection with 
any thing of the kind. Ah, some one adopted the child of 
my brain. He fathers it." 

“ But why ? " said Milly. “ It is something for you to be 
proud of.” 

“ You speak truly. But no one would believe me if I 
called it mine. I did not consent to the adoption, but as 
the child saw the light through him, it bears his name.” 

“ Did he finish your work for you ? ” 

“ It was complete when he took it from me.” 

“ But how ? ” 

“ That day and night,” said Van Sittart, taking up the 
narrative again, “ I walked the streets like one in a dream. 
I was unspeakably happy, I did not eat or sleep for many 
hours. When I came back to my usual self there was a new 
need in my nature — the need for expression. I told you, I 
had always been a lonely man. I loved my father, but his 
thoughts left this world when my pretty mother died. A 
few sweet women are all that remain of my kindred, and 
they are only near to me through affection. I had many 
friends, but out of them all I could think of only one in that 
hour. There was a man whom I had newly come to love. 
I can not tell you how much he had become to me in a rather 
brief acquaintance. He called out the best in me, and I 
gave him of my best. There was the possibility of an ideal 
goodness in that man. I cared for him as men care for 
each other sometimes. We can only speak of that regard 
by actions. So I took my triumph to him.” Van Sittart 
stopped once more. The flickering fire burned lower, and 
the shadows in the half-lit room fell heavier. 

“ It was to be some time before my discovery could be 
put into shape,” he went on, presently. “ My friend’s inter- 
est was as keen as my hopes had promised. He questioned 


342 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


me closely as to my processes in the matter, and in the full- 
ness of my heart, I told him all. I was glad to be able to 
tell him something, for there were many things which he 
had told me. He spent many evenings with me in my lab- 
oratory, and I gave him illustrations'of each step I had taken. 
He had looked rather thoroughly into such matters in his 
early youth ; and this, with his marvelous quickness of 
comprehension, soon enabled him to understand it all as 
well as I did. 

“ Well, at last the time came for me to submit the result 
of my years of labor to the authorities. I speedily received 
word that I was only offering them a repetition of what had 
come to them a week earlier. I went to my friend in wild 
excitement — did I tell you he was a lawyer ? — to communi- 
cate this extraordinary news, and ask his advice in the mat- 
ter. But when I saw his face, I knew it all.” 

“ Not he, oh, not he ! ” 

“ He was the man.” 

“ Tell me ” 

“ I left him. I have never known how I did it. The 
days that followed were black days.” 

“ You let that man keep it ? ” 

“ I had no choice. When I could think about it reason- 
ably, I consented to the frantic entreaties of Mrs. Schuyler 
and Laura, that I should permit our family lawyer to take 
the matter in hand. There are few more skillful than he, 
and I bade him exercise his skill, for I was far from yielding 
my rights for the sake of that ruined friendship. Well, 'he 
did all he could, which was much, and yet nothing. There 
was nothing to prove that I rather than — rather than my 
enemy, had been the discoverer. There is no need to 
tell you any more. He kept it. He keeps to-day the money 
and fame and honor of which he robbed me.” 

The fire had dropped to dull ashes, and they sat silent in 


ANOTHER'S WOE. 343 

the gloom together. Suddenly, Milly turned her white face 
with its blazing eyes on the quiet figure before her. 

“ Tell me that man’s name ? ** 

“ No,” said Van Sittart, smiling ; “ I shall never do 
that.” 

“ Who was it that said we must feel within ourselves the 
capacity for every virtue and every crime, before we could 
boast of a rounded character ? ” she asked, in the same 
strained voice. Then, not waiting for an answer, “ I think 
I have realized the last half of the necessary capacity.” 

“ I think I was not free from murderous thoughts,” said 
Van Sittart, catching her meaning. “ But I soon learned 
better. I have been taught a little clairvoyance by my 
experience. I have never been given to analysis of myself 
or others, but I have been able to read that man’s thoughts 
as he read them.” 

“ A dark chapter ! ” 

“ Not so altogether. He is a man to whom expenditure 
on a large scale has become necessary ; he is married and 
has children, and he has a social position still to make. I 
have simple tastes ; I have no one depending upon me, and 
my social position was made for me before I was born. 
The money that was one of the results of my success, was 
of far greater importance to him than to me. I believe that 
he really had cherished in his youth an idea which might, if 
followed out, have resulted as mine resulted. I do not 
believe that he regarded his proceeding as a robbery ; he 
merely considered me as an aid in tracing out early experi- 
ments of his own, to a logical though late conclusion. I 
have an idea that he said something of the kind to me in 
the course of that last interview, which is as much lost from 
my memory as the hours I have spent in sleep. I think he 
adjusted the matter to his conscience by assuring himself 
that our claims were equal, and his necessity greater, and 


344 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


so — well, at least the work is not lost, and it is very narrow- 
minded to care about means when the end is the same.” 

Never, since the days of her tempestuous childhood, had 
such a storm of sobs and tears overtaken Millicent as now 
swept her prone upon the cushions of her lounge. Van 
Sittart started up with wet eyes and radiant face. 

“ Millicent ! Do you hear me ? I thank that man from 
my heart since he has won from you for me so much thought 
as this betokens.” 

‘ Mr. Ferrard ! ” announced the footman at the door. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


TWO LOVERS. 

O NE evening, a month later, two men were walking each 
with a brisk yet aimless step, which indicates always 
that this outlet for energy is undirected by the guiding 
impulse, that being otherwise occupied, one through the 
stately and rather somber quiet of Madison Avenue between 
the Square and Forty-second Street, the other through the 
unattractive width of upper Broadway. Both were thinking 
deeply, and on the same subject. 

“ If I could make her care for me," said Adrian Van Sit- 
tart, to himself, “ care enough to let me be always about 
her, she should have such a chance to feed that sweet, 
starved soul of hers on the beauty that she has known so 
little of, and in her holiness, has thought it wrong to take 
for herself. It will make up to her for all she has suffered, 
if I help her to do some of the work she has laid out for 
herself ; th'at will always be first with her ; and she shall 
make no more mistakes that I can not take the brunt of. 
They have never known how to take care of her, the great, 
beautiful, trusting thing ! ” 

Such a vision of Milly, in her large-hearted, unsuspecting 
sweetness came before him that he caught his breath. It 
was inevitable that the thought of all that was implied in 
her granting him the guidance of the rest of her days should 
rush upon him, and stir the loyal soul in its unselfish love, 
with the rapturous anticipation of possession. Millicent 
would receive only because she could give. Was there ever 
a woman like her ? No sweet, small creature this, to awaken 


346 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


one emotion, appeal to this or that side of a man's varying 
soul. Was there a sense, an aspiration, a sentiment that 
she did not awaken, one string in the harp of human feeling 
that did not vibrate at her touch ? How one could steal 
at close of day, worn with toil, to rest a weary head 
against her knee, and feel her hand falling with all a 
mother’s tenderness on his hot forehead ! What a friend 
she would be in those clear moments of intellectual compre- 
hension which illuminate some of our dull days, and cast a 
revealing light on the path before us ! What a comrade 
when the tug came, and a man needed a stout, gentle heart 
beating beside his own ! Yet sweeter still was the vision of 
her as the wife, the throned lady of the home, the center of 
existence ; more thrilling the thought of her as the mistress 
whose beauty would be his pride, whose answering passion 
his rapture. “ And ah ! ” thought Van Sittart, with wet eyes, 
“ what a child to lift in one’s arms and carryover the stones 
and thorns in the way, to pet and shelter and keep safe forever 
more ! ” When love makes its last visit to a nature like this, it 
takes possession of the whole nature. He had known little of 
lesser passions, but he hated that little now. He laughed at the 
trouble which had darkened the last year. The labor of half 
a lifetime was a small price to pay for one of those precious 
tears which she had shed like rain for him. She should 
never shed another if he could help it. Grief should be 
kept at unbroken distance, and her lightest fancy indulged. 
She should have that length of lace, bless her heart, and 
wear it too ! Or she should take all he had left and divide 
it equally between all the denied wretches she could collect, 
if that would make her happier. That was not much 
to do for her ! He had loved her from the first moment 
that she had lifted that golden head to look with serious 
eyes into his own as Laura spoke his name. Rhapsody ? 
No, reason. Not in spite of that potent monitor, but because 


TWO LOVERS. 


347 


of it. The old, sweet madness had come upon him, but he 
knew that when the fever had spent itself he should find 
that this act of falling in love with Millicent Barron had 
been the very wisest one of all his life. He did not decry 
himself as unworthy nor thought of measuring and compar-- 
ing the value of their two natures. He had the modesty of a 
dignified character, but he knew what he could do to make a 
woman happy. He knew what he would do for this woman. 

The scientist had fallen in love in the old-fashioned, 
sudden, absorbing way, the way which we read about in 
ancient songs and stories, and which rouses in our unrespon- 
sive hearts, as we read, a dreary wonder at our own inca- 
pacity for such passion, or a quietly positive unbelief in the 
past, present and future existence of an emotion so much at 
variance with the flat content of our affections. 

It was not only that divine impulse which moves an ardent 
nature in finding its ideal incarnate that made up his feeling 
for Milly. He loved all the little commonplace touches about 
her. His lady’s kerchief was a delight to him, and he would 
have given worlds to possess one of her half-shabby gloves. 

The next evening he and Ferrard were to escort Mrs. and 
Miss Schuyler and Milly to the opera. Adrian dwelt on the 
thought of it. He would take care of her for at least part 
of the evening ; and, while the thrilling music throbbed and 
wailed through the house, he would sit in a quiet corner of 
the box and watch that one face in all the gay careless audi- 
ence, as it colored and lightened when the waves of melody 
beat upon her ear. 

Ferrard never apologized to himself, but his respect for 
that personage often compelled him to offer explanations. 
He was offering one now as he strode along the glare of the 
street lamps and the light flung from ugly shops. He meant 
to marry. He was thirty-six years old, and he wanted a 
home. He had a large share of human nature, and he was 


348 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


not indifferent to human love, all the less because he had 
sternly denied himself the soft indulgence, until now when 
he saw his way clear to its unrestricted enjoyment. Five 
years ago Millicent Barron had seemed to him too valueless 
to share Haslett’s life. Ferrard did not say that he had 
changed his opinion ; he only asserted emphatically that 
time had changed Millicent. He had met some women 
who possessed qualities that awakened his admiration, but 
he had never until now met one who combined the many 
desirable traits which he felt it necessary to secure in a wife. 
This beautiful, healthy creature would adorn his life, add to 
his comforts, and be the noble mother of strong children. 
She had the intelligence too, to be an agreeable companion, 
and .though her ideas about things in general were all wrong— 
Ferrard smiled. His wife’s ideas did not occur to him as 
likely to prove that irresistible force which would come in 
contact with the unmovable body of his fixed intentions in 
life. Ferrard was not without the protecting tenderness, 
innate in all powerful natures, toward what he liked, and it 
gave him some pleasure to think of destroying those trouble- 
some tendencies in Milly which had complicated the prob- 
lems of her lot and interfered with her enjoyment. 

On the following evening he was to have made one of an 
opera party which included Milly. He could not keep his 
engagement with Mrs. Schuyler, as business of urgent import- 
ance would imperatively claim him at nine o’clock. But he 
intended to see Millicent first and ask her to marry him. 
Ferrard was inclined to believe that her contradictory 
nature was preparing rather a long siege for him, but he 
had no doubt as to the ultimate success of his suit. He had 
been quite honest years ago in declaring that he would be 
guided by individual preference only in making his matri- 
monial choice, and he was glad now that a poor girl had 
determined the choice. He could give her many things. 


TWO LOVERS. 


349 


He had ceased to be spoken of as a rising man, and might 
justly consider himself a risen one. It suited Ferrard’s 
selfish, generous, arrogant temper to make the whole pros- 
perity of the woman he loved. For in his own way he did 
love her. What was it to him that she was not, as he had 
once expressed it to Haslett, plastic. The quality of plas- 
ticity was never lacking in those who came in contact with 
Paul Ferrard. The suddenness with which he had settled 
the rather momentous question of his matrimonial destiny 
would be matched by the quickness with which his wife 
would learn to look at life, through his eyes. 

It was with rather a grim smile on his face, that, on the fol- 
lowing afternoon, he suffered his feelings to express them- 
selves in the floral fashion affected by the gilded youth whom 
he despised, and sent to Millicent a box of great Mermet 
roses that carried with them an opulent suggestion of ad- 
miration. At eight o’clock he called at Mrs. Schuyler’s 
house, an hour before the time set for assembling for the 
opera. The card which the footman carried up to Milly 
was not engraved, but bore Ferrard’s autograph, which he 
always chose to use. He had dashed it down on the 
bit of paste-board just before leaving his room, and he felt, 
as he thus signed his name, that he ratified a deed which was 
from every point of view thoroughly justifiable. How dif- 
ferent she was from the bloodless, vapid, sickly, pretty 
creatures who languished in the parlors he had frequented 
of late. How different fromthe angular, loud-voiced young 
women who affected the sporting type ! Ferrard detested 
sick people, considering them largely to blame for their con- 
dition, and superfluous, not to say abnormal, elements in the 
scheme of human affairs. He also disliked harshness of 
voice, manner and form in a woman as tending to render her 
unattractive to man, thus frustrating the ends for which she 
* was created. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


AN UNACCEPTED REFUSAL. 

F ERRARD awaited her. Trembling? Not he! He 
came to claim his own. But his emotions had not been 
spent in their own analysis, and he felt the moment become 
dramatic as he heard the rustle of her draperies, the tread 
of her light feet drawing near. 

She came down the stately suite of splendid rooms in a 
trailing gown of white and gold. Against her breast was 
the nodding mass of gorgeous roses. One, pink as love’s 
first blush, lolled back upon her white bosom. As she 
pushed back a heavy and curious portiere of Eastern stuff at 
the further end of the last room, and stood outlined against 
its rich dimness, white, gold-flecked, gold-crowned by the 
rolling wealth of her hair, the sweet, majestic womanhood, 
holding still in its innocent dignity a touching suggestion of 
recent childhood, Ferrard bowed, and then lifted his high 
head in exultant reverence. He noted all with unsealed 
eyes ; the affluent curves of the lofty figure, the depths of 
tint in the brilliant face, the dimpled whiteness of the soft 
powerful hands, and oh ! the disciplined soul looking out 
from the wide dark eyes. He would bring all the treasures 
of existence to cast at the feet that brought her near to him. 
Not himself. Never himself. He wanted to absorb that 
blooming, ripening life into his own. He wanted to pos- 
sess her. 

“ It is very good of you, Mr. Ferrard,” she said, with a 
light touch upon the perfumed mass of flowers. “ I think * 


A N UNA CCEP 7 ED REFUSA L. 35 1 

I never saw such roses. Look at this one ; did you ever see 
such a Bacchante of a flower ? Its splendid head is heavy 
with its own perfection, and the rosy, clustering leaves seem 
bursting open in the veriest riot of bloom. Their little 
kinswoman, the wild rose, would never know these patrician 
revelers. They leave her to bloom in the hedge while they 
go to the opera with me, to die in a blaze of light and a clash 
of music.” 

“ They are like yourself,” said Ferrard. 

“ Is that my fate as you predict it?” 

“ Not as I would make it.” 

“ Ah, who can do that for another ? ” 

“ I can.” 

“ You are confident.” 

“ Because I love you.” 

“ You ! 

« I.” 

“ You disliked me.” 

“Once.” 

“ But now — ” 

“ I ask you to give yourself to me.” 

“ I knew you had learned to like me,” said Milly, in a 
trembling voice, “ else you would not have been so kind to 
me. But I never dreamed of this ! ” 

“ Will you answer me ? ” 

“ I can not give the answer to which your wishes must 
incline, Mr. Ferrard, else the question — the demand had 
never been made.” 

“Will you consent to become my wife ?” said Ferrard, 
acutely sensitive to the tremor with which she spoke, and 
brushing the words aside as one who pardons an irrele- 
vance. 

“ No.” There was no tremor now. 

“ Why ? ” asked Ferrard, unmoved. 


352 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ I do not love you. You did not think it worth while to 
ask me about that.” 

“ No,” said Ferrard. “ I will make you love me.” 

“ You will never make me love you. And if you could I 
would not marry you.” 

“ Again, why ? ” 

“ Ah,” said Millicent, “ because I choose to live my own 
life. Because you have no respect for the individuality of 
another lot. Because you would never recognize in me the 
imperious need for personal liberty which has determined 
your own actions. You offer me a destiny. To be your 
wife — that is what you want the future to mean to me. You 
ask me to give myself to you ; what will you give to me in 
return ? Oh, love ! Yes, but you expect that from me 
also, and how much else beside ? You wish me to share 
your life. Have you ever thought of sharing mine ? How 
large a part in your scheme of existence do the domestic 
relations play? Do you consider your mission fulfilled 
when you become my husband ? I have a nature as intense 
as your own. My personality is as sacred as yours. Would 
that be dear to you ? Ah no ! I should be but your mis- 
tress as your wife, not the helpmate, lover, friend, which I 
ought to be in myself and find in you. These are hard 
words, but my life has not been destitute of hard experience. 
Once I would have cared for such love as you offer me, but 
not now. I have a right to myself, wedded or unwedded.” 

“ I can be tender,” said Ferrard. 

“ Tender? Yes, one cares for tenderness but one needs 
justice. Would all your protection and caresses atone to 
me for the place I should hold in your heart ? The place 
that even now I hold. You do not like my plan of life, 
and had its broken, faulty, incomplete revelations been 
instead what my best aspirations would make it seem to-you 
and others, still you would not like it.” 


AN UNACCEPTED REFUSAL. 


353 


“ No, I do not like your plan of life." 

“ But that does not matter to you ! You would not care 
what I thought while you could control my actions. You 
W ould never spend yourself in weeding out sensitive growths 
that were rank and useless in your sight. You would ride 
rough-shod over them.” 

“ And you would not mind. When I teach you what 
love is, your phantom world will be well lost.” 

“ You never will teach me ! Ah, Mr. Ferrard, I must 
seem so ungentle, but indeed I am not ungrateful. I thank 
you for loving me. It is an honor to me, for you are a 
great man. But it is the greatness of an earlier time than 
this. It is that greatness which in bygone ages lifted mighty 
stones and built eternal monuments to its own power. 
There is a new greatness to-day ; akin to that which sends 
the echo of a voice from one distant city to another, to that 
little spark which flashes momentous tidings over wide seas. 
Yours is the force that propels or crushes ; that which is 
coming will penetrate and suffuse. Do you know what I 
mean ? You are what is called a radical, but you belong to 
the old regime ; I, to the new. I do not want a master ; 
you can find so easily a sweeter slave.” 

Ferrard listened in silence. As she finished Milly looked 
up and caught her breath as the concentrated purpose of 
the splendid face was bent on her. 

“ I have spoken,” she said, answering that unconquered 
look. 

“ And I have heard,” he replied. 

“ And it makes no difference ! You feel strong enough 
to brush my words and my will away. Ah, how dare you ? ” 

“ I shall never give you up,” said Ferrard. “ I told you 
I did not approve of your plan of life. I do not approve of 
your mode of reasoning. In fact, I think the process by 
which you have arrived at your present conclusion scarcely 


354 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


merits the word. But you speak truly. I do not mind. 
When you are my wife these vagaries will whirl away like 
down in the breeze.” 

“ I refuse to be your wife.” 

“ I refuse to accept your refusal. You do not under- 
stand yourself. I can wait.” 

“ You will wait your lifetime through ! ” 

“ I think not. I must have you.” 

“ Ah,” said Milly, despairingly, “ what weakness is it in 
me that hinders my last word from becoming final to your 
comprehension ? I do not love you.” 

“ You will.” 

“ If I told you that another — ” 

“That is nothing. You loved another years ago. My 
love will make you forget all lesser passions.” 

“ You defy me so ? ” 

“ I defy you so.” 

A velvet hanging was pushed aside, and Van Sittart 
entered. He looked from one beautiful, defiant figure to 
the other, and his face whitened. He came forward with 
the courtly grace that never failed this gentle man. 

Milly was too deeply shaken to speak. She extended her 
hand to him in silence. Ferrard greeted him with perfect 
self-possession. 

“ I came to tell Mrs. Schuyler that I can not make one 
of the opera party to-night. I am sorry, since I formed 
part of the escort, but you are a host in yourself, Van Sit- 
tart.” 

He shook hands with Van Sittart and turned to Milly 
with a radiant, undaunted smile in his eyes. “ Good-even- 
ing. I shall see you soon again.” 

He was gone, and Adrian and Milly stood alone together. 

“ You will not desert us, I hope, Mr. Van Sittart,” said 
Milly, with a nervous effort. 


AN UNACCEPTED REFUSAL. 


355 


He did not answer, and as she lifted her downcast eyes 
she saw his own fixed on Ferrard’s flowers at her breast. 
He met her glance and held out his hand to her, with the 
very sweetest smile she had ever seen. 

“ So best,” he said. “ He can serve you better than I.” 
The deep color in Milly’s cheeks overflowed her whole 
face with a soft and happy flush. 

“My friend,” she said. “You do him great injustice. 
He desires to serve no one but himself.” 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


THE CONQUEST OF FERRARD, 


LL my fair readers, not to speak of those who are less 



A fair, will confirm me in the statement that Milly is not 
unique through her endurance of the pangs of unrequited 
love. Another little maiden whom we know had been 
fighting against similar pangs, in her silent fashion, for years, 
and while Milly was crying her heart out, and betaking her- 
self to soul-cures, and praying and struggling and recover- 
ing, this young woman had been quietly guarding the doors 
of her heart from the entrance of pain by a series of small 
stratagems which were also calculated to entice pleasure 
within, and induce her to make a permanent stay. 

Helen had fallen in love with Ferrard, wisely, warily, 
finally. Miss Elkins was susceptible enough in her own 
way, and Ferrard’s peculiar beauty had appealed to her 
susceptibilities, but he might have been quite as handsome 
and much better without calling all that intense admiration 
into play in her restrained soul, had he not possessed those 
qualities which the shrewd and ambitious little lady, with 
her unspoken aspirations, saw were destined to win brilliant 
success for him. 

Mr. Elkins’s righteous conviction of his own virtues had 
taken shape in his daughter in an excellent opinion of her- 
self, but she was rather humble when she thought of her- 
self in connection with Ferrard. She saw much of him at 
Mr. White’s house, where she was on a footing of almost 
equal indulgence with Kitty ; she studied him soberly and 


THE CONQ UES T OF TERRA ED. 357 

acutely, and it is really rather pathetic to think of what she 
suffered in the effort to bring ^herself up to his standard. 
She quickly learned his distaste, not to say his contempt, 
for delicacy of health, and she straightway devoted herself 
to physical culture with untiring assiduity. Dreadful little 
iron dumb-bells were wont to bruise and trip the feet of 
those who unwarily entered her room. She drank hot 
water that brought tears to her eyes when she rose in the 
morning, and she took cold, baths that caused her teeth to 
chatter when she retired at night. She had the position of 
her bed determined by a rigorous reference to the polar 
currents, and she abjured pillows. She wore rough flannels 
that irritated her sensitive skin until frenzy seemed immi- 
nent. She ate farinaceous foods which she loathed, and 
beefsteak, which made her faint as it bled at the knife. 
Her old dislike for Millicent became something more posi- 
tive and active as she contrasted her cousin's grand pro- 
portions with her own attenuated, though graceful, figure. 
That sea-shell tint, flushing and fading in her little oval 
face, how she hated it, as she watched the splendid, steady 
bloom on the firm round of Milly’s cheeks. She cast aside 
the dainty gowns, triumphs of economical art, which had 
been wont to ruffle softly around her, giving grace and 
shape with their many flounces and frills and furbelows to 
her meager contours, and clad herself in garments of the 
severest plainness which cruelly betrayed her extreme frag- 
ility, because she had heard Ferrard advocate the universal 
use of untrimmed, tailor-made suits. She abandoned the 
dainty little high heeled bottines, which gave her the cov- 
eted additional inch in height, in favor of broad, thick-soled 
heelless and shapeless shoes, in which she took endless 
walks that fatigued her to the swooning point, and which 
she mentioned afterward to Ferrard as “glorious tramps." 
She bore sore throat, headache, lassitude, a hundred dis- 


35 « 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


piriting afflictions, with the uncomplaining fortitude of an 
Indian, and would never under any circumstances confess 
to the slightest physical weakness. She managed with 
tact to bring the many practical matters in which she was 
really skilled, to the surface when she talked with Fer- 
rard, and this not for a day, or week or month, but 
for five years. Surely poor Helen's fidelity deserved a 
reward. 

Mr. White had for two years been the owner of a fine 
country place on Long Island, and he had contracted an 
agreeable habit lately of running down there for a week’s 
stay long after the summer season had closed, or before it 
opened again, quite unaware, good man, of the commend- 
ably British character of this proceeding. On the day fol- 
lowing his interview with Millicent, Ferrard received a 
note from Mr. White inviting him to spend a couple of 
days at “the farm,” as Uncle Jo would persist in calling it. 
If it had not been for that interview he would probably have 
refused the invitation, being thoroughly familiar with the 
place, and finding Mr. White’s society, divorced from polit- 
ical ends, a less supportable trial as that worthy gentleman 
advanced in years and prosperity. But he found it sur- 
prisingly difficult to remain in New York without seeing 
Millicent, and he felt that he had best leave her to undis- 
turbed meditation on his words for a little time. 

It was Helen who had said to her uncle, as she and 
Kitty sat sewing silently in the large room where Mr. 
White smoked his post-prandial cigar: “Uncle Jo, why 
don’t you ask some one down here ? It must be awfully 
stupid for you, with only two girls to talk to. It’s such a 
pity Aunt Lucy wouldn’t come.” 

“ Well, I don’t know who to ask. Most people don’t 
care for the country in January.” 

“ Ask some one who is an exception to the general rule, 


THE CONQUEST OF EE REA ED. 


359 


then. There must be one or two of that sort among your 
acquaintances.” 

“ I know one, certainly,” said Mr. White, thinking of a 
letter which he had received a day or two before, contain- 
ing some valuable hints as to the manner in which he was 
to bear himself in a coming contest, where, to his unspeak- 
able wrath, Haslett’s interests opposed his own, which had, 
however, been suddenly sustained in another and unex- 
pected quarter. 

“ I know one, and that one is Ferrard. What do you 
say to Ferrard, young ladies ? ” 

“ I shall like to see him, because you like him so much, 
papa,” said Kitty, with her tender smile. 

“ I suppose you will let me say the same, uncle,” said 
Helen, demurely. “ I should think he would be a good 
one to ask. He doesn’t want to be entertained.” 

This last clause was a most judicious insertion, for Mr. 
White was among the men who regard the obligation to 
assume a host’s duties of self-abnegation in small matters 
as an unpardonable injury which it is their privilege to 
resent as part of an ill-constructed social system. Who 
has not met the man whose fortunes we may wreck, whose 
future lay waste with impunity, but who will never forgive 
us for entailing on him a half hour of polite conversation 
when he is not conversationally inclined, or compelling him 
to defer for five minutes his imperative cigar? 

“That’s so,” said Mr. White, cordially. “ I’ll write to- 
morrow.” He was very glad to see Ferrard when he met 
him at the station, and told him so as they drove up to the 
house in the clear, cold twilight. It pleased Ferrard, for he 
was conscious of a kindly impulse toward all who could be 
counted among Milly’s kin, and found that Mr. White 
gained a sudden interest from being viewed in that light. 

“ The place looks as well as it does in summer,” said the 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


36° 

guest, looking at the house, which was rather imposing for 
all its woodenness. The boughs of the trees in the bare 
wintry grounds had never been more attractive in their 
dress of fringing leaves than now, laced in delicate tracery 
across the clear green of the horizon that promised chill 
weather on the morrow. 

“ It’s a great place,” said Mr. White, cordially, “ and it’s 
yours while you stay, as it always has been. Now what 
will you do with yourself to-morrow? I’ve a horse that is 
worth driving — not this fellow — and you can take the girls 
out or go alone, just as you like. And I think you can get 
a shot at the ducks even now if you care for it.” 

“ I. certainly care for it,” said Ferrard ; “ it is a long time 
since I’ve had any shooting. I hope the ladies will not 
think' me discourteous if I choose arms rather than fire-side 
dalliance.” 

“ Oh, they won’t mind,” said Mr. White, to whom the 
idea that his daughter or niece could presume to make a 
personal interest of Ferrard’s presence was impossible. 
“ You won’t dislike going alone. You know your way to 
the shore as well as I do, and I should probably make an 
end of you and myself if I tried my hand at shooting.” 

The next morning broke blue, golden, sparkling ; one of 
those winter mornings which make us wonder how we 
could ever have fallen in love with summer. Helen was 
alive to the tips of her smooth, useful fingers with gladness. 
Never had Ferrard’s manner been so full of suavity toward 
her as it had on the previous evening. The whole spirit of 
the man seemed softer, sweeter. Could it be that at last 
what she had hoped and longed and worked for was at 
hand ? She stood on the broad piazza and scarcely felt the 
sting of the sharp morning air. As she looked over the 
winter landscape to the blue gleam of the bay beyond, a 
little boy, the child of the man who attended to the farm 


THE CONQUEST OF FERRARO. 361 

attached to the mansion, came trudging past. The saucy, 
merry urchin held in his hard little hand an ancient, 
broken-bladed knife, with which he vainly tried to whittle a 
soft stick into the likeness of something on the face of the 
earth. Helen disliked children, but she felt gently toward 
every living thing to-day. 

“ Tommy,” she called to the child. 

Tommy turned his round face, reddened with cold and 
his fruitless exertions, to the young lady. 

“ Come here.” 

“What do you want?” demanded Tommy, not intend- 
ing to travel up those steps unless a fair equivalent for time 
and labor and expenditure of nervous force was offered 
him. 

Helen’s slim hand slipped into her pocket and out again, 
and was stretched toward the doubting Thomas. On the 
pink palm lay an object which struck Tommy as quite the 
most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was a smooth, 
shining, pearl handled pen-knife, which proved on a closer 
acquaintance to possess qualities of far more value than 
mere outside loveliness, in the shape of four keen, glitter- 
ing blades. 

“ Change ? ” said Helen, amicably. 

“Golly,” said Tommy, ecstatically. 

“ You may keep them both,” said Helen, hastily turning 
as she heard voices drawing near the door from within. 
“There ; don’t cut yourself. Now run away.” 

She went into the house, feeling a mild but pleasurable 
glow of excitement in the exercise of this unwonted benev- 
olence, and joined Ferrard, as he stood before the blazing 
fire, with a little hilarious shiver. 

Tommy went on down the road, an exalted, beautified 
Tommy if ever there was one. 

When he had whittled every stick on the place into indis* 


3 6z 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


criminate shavings, had destroyed the surface of his moth- 
er’s best table, and gouged a piece out of the baby’s cradle, 
the crack of the doom sounded, mildly at first, as the extent 
of his iniquity was still, unknown. 

“ Don’t you think it would be nice to let mother have the 
pretty knife for a little while, Tommy ? ” asked Mrs. San- 
ders, in that unnaturally cheerful tone with which we all try 
to cajole others into compliance with our inconvenient 
wishes as something likely to be vastly to their advantage. 

“ No,” said Tommy, frankly. 

“ Is that a nice way to speak to ma ? ” asked the mother, 
turning on him, and, as she did so, obtaining a full view of 
the defaced table and mutilated cradle. There was a por- 
tentous silence, then the full crash came. 

“ Thomas Sanders, you hand that knife over to me this 
instant. I declare, Miss Helen must have been crazy to give 
it to you, you bad, naughty boy ! ” 

“I won’t,” said Tommy. He was seven years old, but 
this was the first time in his life that he had dared to openly 
defy his energetic mother. Her snapping black eyes opened 
wide in paralyzed astonishment, and in that moment all the 
enormity of his declaration of independence rushed upon 
Tommy’s small soul. But, let come what might, he could 
not give his pen-knife, his idolized knife, into that imperious 
custody. It remained therefore for him to accept the fate 
of other rebels against existing institutions, and go into self- 
imposed exile, carrying with him the cherished bone of 
contention, rather than submit to that injurious authority. 
The kitchen door was an easy door to open, and Tommy 
turned and fled. Over the frozen fields on an ambling run 
went the stout little body, and Mrs. Sanders, amazed at this 
bold measure and mindful of the biting air and her neu- 
ralgia, forebore to follow, promising herself the rich indul- 
gence of “ fixing ” that refractory subject when hunger, the 


THE CONQUEST OF FE.RRARD. 


363 


great humbler of haughty spirits, should bring him within 
her reach again. But as she watched the short plaid legs 
plunging uneasily into ruts and out of hollows, a thought of 
the dangers latent in that opened blade sensibly weakened 
her maternal indignation. 

“ I hope to goodness he won’t cut himself to pieces with 
that thing. Miss Helen ought to be shook for giving it to 
him ; girls like that have got no idea about children. 
Still, he’s mighty handy, for all the world like his pa, though 
he ain’t nothing but a baby,” she said, with a relenting 
accent, as she drew a cloth over the damaged table. 

As soon as the fleeing culprit dared to look back, the ces- 
sation of hostilities became apparent to him, yet he dared 
not risk a renewal by returning. But it was impossible to 
remain in this field, barren of employment for his knife. Sud- 
denly a bright thought animated the disturbed and hesita- 
ting Tommy. At the other end of the field was a high 
rustic fence made of rough sapling-trunks and large 
branches. There was on one rail a particular protuberance 
which came distinctly to Tommy’s memory. It was on one 
side, a rough bossy knot, which he had often seen his father 
and others use as a step in climbing the fence. How 
delightful it would be to prune down that ugly excrescence, 
and make the place where it had been nice and smooth ! 
And what a brave work for the knife. It was not long 
before Tommy was seated on a large flat rock directly 
before the objectionable knot, whittling desperately at it 
with the effective little blades in the clutch of the sturdy 
little fingers. Soon it was perceptibly diminishing, and 
Tommy’s bosom swelled with pride. This was something 
that baby sister could not do, and Tommy had strong, 
though unexpressed reasons for wishing to excel baby sister, 
whose superiority to him was much insisted on by his unap- 
preciative family. 


3 6 4 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


Ferrard was a little late in setting out on his solitary gun- 
ning expedition. Helen’s intelligent little speeches had not 
keen answered with indifferent courtesy, or brusquely cut 
short as usual. Something more than his new-born love 
for Milly was mellowing, yet exhilarating his whole being. 
A letter that had reached him just as he was setting out for 
the depot on the preceding evening, and carelessly slipped 
into his pocket and forgotten, had been discovered by him 
in the process of dressing this morning. It was directed in 
an unfamiliar clerical hand, else its fate would not have 
been that of temporary oblivion, but the inclosure was in 
the decided writing of John Winthrop Reverdy. They 
were momentous words which the great man had traced 
there. They framed a proposition which, arrogant, self-con- 
fident, consciously powerful as Paul Ferrard was, startled 
him by the prospect of an immediate leap into national 
fame. A prize for which he had expected to work and wait 
with strenuous patience and unflagging energy for years, lay 
suddenly at his feet. He would reach the pinnacle of dis- 
tinction, not in his gray age or his sober prime, but in all 
the vigor of his young manhood, while every faculty for 
enjoyment in its undulled intensity was alive to receive the 
honors and pleasures won with such magnificent ease. A 
great place waited for him. Well, and who could better 
fill it ? he said to himself with proud honesty. 

He had told the news to* Mr. White, who received it with 
an awed wonder, for the first time filled with conscious 
deference to the younger man whom he had presumed to 
consider his protege. Mr. White had news of his own to 
tell Ferrard. Some little time before Ferrard had given 
him a portion of his modest savings to invest, having a full 
confidence in the commercial judgment occasionally known 
to accompany many amusing weaknesses in our mercantile 
friends. Mr. White had acted on this approved judgment, 


THE CONQUEST OF FERRARD. 


365 


and the result had been what the good gentleman called a 
“tidy little fortune” for Ferrard. No man dislikes the 
idea of adding to his possessions, even if he be slightly 
bewildered as to the disposition he shall make of them, and 
Ferrard had not been embarrassed in this way as yet, his 
gains so far having been in honors that hinted at coin in 
the future rather than secured it in the present. Milly’s 
refusal to entertain his suit, had stimulated rather than dis- 
couraged him, as he did not in the least believe it final, and 
only heightened the novel interest of this wooing by the 
difficulty of a little fanciful opposition to overcome. 

He was a glorious picture of superb manhood as he stood 
at the foot of the steps that morning, while Helen and Kitty 
spoke merry words of adieu from the door. His cap was 
in his hand, and the beautiful, dauntless forehead beneath 
the tossing waves of flaxen hair rose in white light above the 
dark fire of his flashing eyes. The full red lips were curved 
in a gay smile, and the pose of the splendid, heavy figure 
as he looked back at the young women, had the old heroic 
grace of the days when giants walked the earth. He crossed 
the chill bare fields over which Tommy had fled an hour 
earlier, with the long, powerful, even stride which was his 
usual step. He was in love with life as he went, who had 
turned from her attitude of hard task mistress to others to 
crouch a willing slave to him. He gloried with some- 
thing of the old virile pagan nature-worship — not the 
refined shadowy pantheism of to-day — in the blue and gold 
of sky and shore, the pungent, salt-freighted air, and his 
rich voice rang out now and then in snatches of a long for- 
gotten college song with a wealth of jubilant, deep melody. 
He knew every step of the way, for the place was a summer 
home to him. He came to the fence by which Tommy had 
been seated a little while before. He shifted the position of 
his gun a little, stepped quickly up. on the lower rail, feeling 


3 66 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


with the other foot for the knot which had been a familiar 
step to him. Not meeting with its wonted support, the foot 
slipped. He grasped at the upper rail ineffectually with his 
free hand, grasped and lost it again, and fell heavily back- 
ward. The gun discharged its contents harmlessly into the 
air, but. Ferrard lay quite still on the great rock where he 
had fallen. 

Two hours later he had been discovered by Mr. Sanders, 
and borne back, an inert weight, to the house which he had 
left a little while before in the full plenitude of radiant, 
vigorous health. A messenger on a galloping horse was 
dispatched for the country doctor, whose modest house was 
not far from the White place, then for a famous New York 
physician who was known to be staying in a neighboring 
village. Both were quick in answering the summons, and 
for days remained in the house, unremitting in their atten- 
tions to the beautiful stricken man, whose powerful face had 
suddenly become, despite the fever and restlessness, as 
placid as that of a little child. To the frantic inquiries of 
Mr. White they replied in that absorbed, oracular fashion of 
which the healer has need to know the secret, since no Del- 
phic mystery was ever implored with more of trembling hope 
for a merciful revelation than that with which poor mortals 
hang on the careful words of the medical man. 

Day followed day without apparent 'change. It might 

have been a week — Helen could never measure that time 

before the decisive word was spoken. She entered the sit- 
ting-room and crouched behind the curtains in the deep 
embrasure of the window, according to her daily wont while 
Mr. White held his conference with the doctors. 

“ This morning I think we may consider the case decided, 
Mr. White," said the distinguished physician, gravely. 

“ Will he get well ? Don't tell me that he won’t get well," 
cried Ferrard’s faithful friend. 


THE CONQUEST OF FERRARD . 


3 6 7 


“ He will recover." 

“ Oh, thank God ! " cried Mr. White, the tears streaming 
down his ruddy face. 

“ Thank God ! " murmured Helen, in her curtained 
hiding-place. 

There was no answering radiance in the doctor’s sad eyes 
as they met Mr. White’s. 

“ I wish I had any thing but this to tell you, sir," he said 
at last. 

“ What can you mean by that ? " demanded Mr. White, 
in tremulous amazement. 

“ I mean that the remainder of his life, which bids fair to 
be a long one, will be passed without all that would render 
it attractive." 

“ Is he lamed, crippled ? " 

“ 1 wish it were no worse than that.” 

“ For Heaven’s sake, explain yourself ! " 

“ Are you his closest friend ? " 

“ I count myself among his few intimates. He has no 
near relatives. Tell me ! " 

“ I shall have to beg you to be merciful and care for him 
as long as he lives. He can never care for himself again." 

“ What has happened to him ? " 

“ He struck his head with great violence on the rock 
where he fell. He has received an injury to the brain 
which will render him incurably imbecile." 

“ Imbecile ! Paul Ferrard ! You don’t know him, man ! ” 

“ If he were Caesar’s self the accident would have pro- 
duced the same result," said the physician, with a little 
sorry smile for the man who believed calamity powerless to 
subdue his strong friend. 

Mr. White fell heavily into his seat, trembling in every 
limb, his florid face ashy, his sturdy hands gropingtheir un- 
certain way up to his forehead. The silence that followed 


3 68 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


was so intense that the ticking of three watches was dis- 
tinctly audible. The country doctor was wondering if he 
should make the usual allusion to the inscrutable will of 
Providence, when Mr. White abruptly raised his bowed 
head. 

“ It is absolutely incurable ? ” he asked, harshly. 

“ Absolutely incurable.” 

“ Then why, in God’s name, didn’t you kill him ? ” 

“ My dear sir,” began the country practitioner in a 
shocked voice, but the great surgeon silenced him by a ges- 
ture. 

“ My dear Mr. White,” said he, sadly, “ physicians find no 
harder question to face than this one of fighting for a 
patient’s life when death would be a blissful alternative. 
There have been instances, one in particular ” — a look of 
deep, painful remembrance came upon the sagacious face, 
and he stopped speaking. 

“ If any thing can comfort you,” he resumed after a 
pause, “ it will be to know that your unfortunate friend will 
suffer nothing. His mind is quite gone, but he will eat 
and sleep and sit in the sunshine, and never know a pang 
again as long as he lives. There are those to whom this 
would not seem a hard fate.” 

Mr. White motioned him away with a despairing gesture. 
The two physicians left the room with bent heads. Uncle 
Jo laid his own down on the desk before him, and sobbed as 
he had not done since he turned heart-broken from the 
empty cradle of his first-born. 

He was so convulsed by the storm of rebellious grief that 
he did not notice the slight, shaking figure that slipped past 
him and out of the room. Helen would never look on Fer- 
rard’s face again, and so the poor child’s romance and 
ambitions died together. When she married Edward Bul- 
ley she made a notable housekeeper and a capable little 


THE CONQUEST OF FERRARD . 


369 


hostess, but poor, good-natured Ned could never under- 
stand the sarcasms she hurled at his unoffending head, and 
could only feel her chill reticence to be part of her general 
superiority. 

As soon as the prostrating illness had left Ferrard’s body 
— the body, alas, that was all that was left of him — Milly 
came, begging with many tears that she might see the man 
who, according to his light, had loved her. She was ani- 
mated by a desperate hope that at the sight of her a pene- 
trating memory might sting into life that deadened brain. 
Had she loved him, the thought of that haughty head thus 
brought low could not have moved her more. 

Her prayer was granted, and she was ushered into a large 
sunny room, where, by the window, Ferrard sat in a large 
chair. A string of gayly colored beads was in his hand, and 
with fumbling precision, he slipped to and fro one after the 
other, on the cord. His grand head nodded forward on his 
breast, and the dark eyes, melancholy and vacant, contra- 
dicted the foolish smile that relaxed the fine severe mouth. 
Milly lost all self-control as the piteous sight met her eyes. 
She rushed forward and fell on her knees at his feet. 

“ Don’t you know me ? Oh ! don’t you know me ? ” she 
cried, in an agony of sobs. Ferrard turned his face shyly 
away, with the action of a timid child, then, with the facility 
of childhood, becoming accustomed to the presence of that 
grieving, pleading figure before him, he clanked the beads 
together, as if seeking to distract this friendly stranger 
from her woes. Oh, to have seen him sunk in the grim 
somber silence of melancholy madness, or raving with the 
fury of insanity ! Any thingbut this hideous semblance of 
infancy. 

Ferrard dropped his beads, and, apparently attracted by 
the brightness of the hair, stretched out an uncertain hand 
and laid it on the tumbled waves of it. 


AS COMMON MORTALS . 


37 ° 

“ It is Milly, Milly ! ” she cried. “ Oh, try, try to know 
me ! Oh, I would have tried to love you to save you from 
this ! Don’t you know how I grieve for you ? ” 

But Ferrard’s only answer was to pull the great rings of 
hair through his wandering fingers, and smile as the sun- 
light changed their russet to gold. Milly turned back as 
she was led from the room, with a final wild hope that he 
might be pierced by something like regret as his new play- 
thing was withdrawn from him. 

But already he had ceased to remember it. He was 
pushing the gaudy beads up and down on the string, with 
that terrible, innocent smile, as he sat crouched in the kindly 
sunlight. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


MR. WHITE RETIRES INTO PRIVATE LIFE. 

W HEN Haslett turned away from Ferrard, on the night 
when the memorable proposition was made in the 
little room at the Lenox Club, he wondered a little at the 
deadness of his feeling. There had been a time in his 
career when th.e loss of Ferrard’s friendship would have 
been well nigh the hardest blow that fate could have dealt 
him. He was conscious on that evening, as he walked 
slowly home, that the dominant feeling left by the interview 
was a desire to frustrate Ferrard in his intention of securing 
the nomination of Mr. White from another quarter. 

The time was past when he could debate with himself in 
justification of his actions. He found now the only justifi- 
cation which he needed in the fact that they were deter- 
mined by his desires. The consenting deterioration which 
he had undergone in forsaking Millicent for the sake of the 
more solid advantages which were combined with Eleanor’s 
charms, had not brought him quite to the final turning point 
in his career. The fatal moral crisis had come to him when 
he robbed Adrian Van Sittart of his life-work. 

It happened that at the time of the interview which 
introduced Van Sittart to the reader, Haslett found himself 
in a worse position, pecuniarily speaking, than he had ever 
known. Three valuable houses, which had been inade- 
quately insured, had burned down. Two others, hitherto 
reliable sources of income, had, for some inexplicable rea- 
son, remained unrented for months. Some stock, which he 


372 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


had not unreasonably trusted in, suddenly proved to be a 
not merely worthless but disastrous possession. 

Haslett had grown to find the assurance that he was a 
lucky fellow a necessary chime in his ear. He could 
imagine few things less agreeable than hearing himself 
pitied as “ hard up,” after all. He remembered with un- 
pleasing distinctness all the old humiliating adages of his 
early copy-books, such as “ Set a beggar on horseback and 
he’ll ride to the devil ; ” “A fool and his money soon 
parted,” and other unflattering comments on that extrava- 
gance which vulgar minds would probably consider due to 
a love of display rather than nicety of taste. So far as 
his wife’s available property was concerned, it was employed 
to a penny. His professional income was a mere drop in 
the bucket, especially as he had rather neglected his legal 
business of late in order to more fully enjoy a promising 
little flirtation with politics. Surely if there are angels of 
opportunity, there are also demons. It was on one of his 
most harassed days that a knock on his office door 
announced Adrian Van Sittart. 

That story is old. We know the outcome of that inter- 
view, and Adrian had fairly outlined to Milly that mental 
path which Haslett had followed until he was led to the 
final appropriation of Van Sittart’s birthright. He justi- 
fied himself on the line that Adrian had indicated ; his own 
need, Adrian’s unnecessary affluence, the fact that he had 
been tempted to enter into a not dissimilar investigation in 
his youth. The struggle had been a bitter one, though from 
the first he had known how it would end. He recoiled with 
a shock from the first darting suggestion that this thing was 
possible, nevertheless he permitted his imagination to dwell 
upon it until it bred desire, and desire to grow until it 
became determination. 

When his resolution was once made, it was confirmed by 


MR. WHITE RETIRES INTO PRIVATE LIFE. 373 

his belief, soon proven to be well-founded, that his claim 
once entered, all statements of Van Sittart concerning it 
would be rendered null. So complex is the working of a 
man’s mind that he may at once strive to ward off the 
urging temptation, and warily calculate his chances for 
escaping detection if he yields to its solicitations. 

Haslett was not without some personal regret in the mat- 
ter. He hated to stand ill with Van Sittart, whom he liked, 
but this thought of standing ill with one man — as a scoun- 
drel possibly — was a light affliction in comparison with the 
idea of being generally humiliated. Who of us would not 
rather bear the most furious lashing of vindictive wrath 
than the pitying contempt with which our friends view our 
fallen fortunes? He read Van Sittart as well as he read 
most men, and he knew the reticent temper that would only 
speak when speech would prove effective. And if, hopeless 
of regaining the rights of which he had been defrauded, 
revenge should move Adrian to tell the tale, was not his 
word as good as Van Sittart’s ? Both would doubtless have 
adherents, but he was in possession, and had the nine points 
of law on his side. And, meanwhile, the prior public 
claim, the fame and the money, above all the money, 
belonged to him. It was a bold measure, but Haslett’s 
case, from his own point of view, was desperate. 

That was the last moral battle that Rodney Haslett ever 
waged with himself. After that he did what he chose to 
do, unhampered by questions of right or wrong. From 
that last interview with Ferrard there remained with him a 
feeling new to his intrinsically amiable nature. He was 
conscious of a dislike for the man who had once been closer 
than a brother to him. Haslett’s moral sensitiveness had 
long since given way to enduring callousness, but his amour 
propre had survived his conscience, and the dignified con- 
tempt of Ferrard’s manner had stung him into intense 


374 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


antagonism. Haslett would have denied, even to himself, 
that he had ever been guilty of the folly of permitting 
his political course to be even indirectly affected by private 
considerations of friendship or enmity, but the desire to 
oppose Ferrard certainly added zest to his effort to defeat 
Mr. White in the local campaign. 

It was at the conclusion of a brilliant dinner, given by 
Haslett to several of the more socially eligible among his 
political confederates, that the news of Ferrard’s final over- 
throw came to him. Of his accident all had heard, and 
there were those among Haslett’s guests who felt that any 
turn in human affairs which placed Ferrard temporarily 
out of the question, was a dispensation of Providence most 
clearly in their favor. 

The gentlemen had passed through the more serious 
courses to the agreeable and discursive one of anecdotes, 
cordials and cigars, when Haslett heard his butler’s voice 
just outside the curtained door in parley with that of the 
footman, and one less tutored but equally familiar. 

“ You had better wait in the library until I speak to Mr. 
Haslett, sir,” said the butler, who was a new man, with 
the respect which he felt due to himself rather than the 
intruder. 

“ I’ll be bound it’s meself knows as well as you what I.’d 
best be doing,” said the uninvited guest. “ The young man 
here knows I’m in the habit of coming in here quite fre- 
quent.” 

The butler looked doubtfully at his assistant, but Has- 
lett’s voice, delicate but imperious, rang out, 

“ Admit the gentleman, Willis ! It’s McCarthy,” he 
added in an explanatory tone, turning to his guests. 

The broad, purple-faced, corpulent Irishman pushed his 
way past the servant, who ushered him in with a gesture ot 
protesting civility and a face of strong remonstrance. Has- 


MR. WHITE RETIRES INTO PRIVATE LIFE . 375 

lett bowed airily to the new comer, and the others nodded, 
to a man. 

They evidently knew McCarthy. 

“ Another chair here ! Sit down, Mr. McCarthy.” 

“ Faith, I don’t mind if I do. It’s a letther from Mr. 
Barry I’ve brought ye, and if ye’ve any answer to make, I’ll 
hear it as well as he.” 

Haslett took the letter from the red hand, and with a 
hasty word of apology to his guests, read it. McCarthy’s 
little, blood-shot, blue eyes were fixed with twinkling 
shrewdness on the face which seemed to gain an added re- 
splendence from the evening dress. 

Haslett looked up at last ; his color was deeper, but his 
face was unmoved. 

“ This letter,” he said, addressing the ’eight gentlemen 
who waited in silence, “ informs me of the result of the un- 
fortunate accident which recently befell Mr. Ferrard. 

“ I hope he is not dead,”, said Richard Herndon quite 
honestly, though Ferrard’s life had seriously interfered 
with several of his minor ambitions. 

“ He still lives. His physical health is said to be nearly 
restored. FI is accident has not resulted in death, but in per- 
manent, hopeless imbecility.” 

Of the men who heard, not one loved Ferrard. They 
were his political enemies, and in all he had inspired that 
rebellious, personal dislike which he had the gift of awak- 
ening. But every one there admired him as a man and 
feared him as a foe. 

“ Good God ! ” said Mr. Amsden, with a sickening recol- 
lection of the stern figure that had fronted him with uncon- 
promising menace in that little Lenox Club room so short a 
time ago. “ This is a horrible thing.” 

“ What a fate for Ferrard of all men on the face of the 
earth ! ” exclaimed little Mr. Rayner with white lips. 


376 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


All were silent after that, pushing back their wine- 
glasses, and letting their cigars’ ineffectual fires pale into 
ashes. 

Haslett pushed back his chair, and by common consent 
the party left the room. Later they might be glad that a 
powerful barrier in their way had been broken down and 
crushed. Had they heard of the strong man as dead in 
his prime they might have speculated upon the place thus 
left vacant. But there was that in these tidings which sent 
each one of Haslett’s guests away from his house, pale and 
grave and silent. 

McCarthy, at a look from the host, had lingered. He 
helped himself liberally to a variety of wines, took a cigar 
from a gilded wheel-barrow laden with a dark brown, fra- 
grant load, and between the puffs, crammed his great mouth 
with crystallized sweet-meats. Under these circumstances 
it was not difficult to wait with patience until Haslett 
should be released from the duty of receiving adieus. He 
was making merry with the cordials, to the great disgust of 
the silent Willis, when his friend and fellow worker re- 
entered the room. Haslett seated himself and gave a series 
of directions in a low, rapid voice. McCarthy gulped down 
great draughts of chartreuse without a wink, and listened 
with exhilarated attention. Haslett permitted his ravages 
unmoved. 

McCarthy was one of the ugly factors in his success, and 
he was not alone in the endurance of an intimate familiarity 
from him which it would be ruin to resent. 

“ I’ll fix it, Mr. Haslett,” said McCarthy at last, sway- 
ing a little as he rose from his chair. “ Well, it’s a bad 
business for Mr. Ferrard, sure enough, but since there’s 
bound to be accidents in this wurruld, it’s a friendly attin- 
tion on the part of the saints to send them to those as is 
mighty inconvaynient to us. It’s I that am not on the 


MR. WHITE RETIRES INTO PRIVATE LIFE. 377 

wrong road in suggestin’ that you’re able to take that view 
of it,” he concluded, with a tipsy but still acute leer. 

Haslett waited patiently until he had finished making his 
bibulous adieu, then summoned his men. 

“ Air this room ! ” he said, with a shade of irritability in 
his tones. The winter wind blew sharply into the room, but 
he sat still by the table with its gorgeous wreck of dainties 
and its gay candles burning low in their sockets. He 
smoked fast and carelessly, pulling the ferns that fringed 
the floral center-piece away bit by bit, and casting the frag- 
ments into a finger bowl, where they drifted into circles 
about the slice of lemon. An eager reckless triumph gov- 
erned the thoughtful look of his flushed face. Whatever 
his meditations may have been, they were given expression 
in only one brief sentence as he rose at last. 

“ All plain sailing now ! ” It was his requiem over 
the friend of his boyhood. 

Mr. White remained a private citizen to the end of his 
days. 




CHAPTER XXXVI. 


IN CAMP. 


DRIAN VAN SITTART sat on the edge of his bunk 



A in a miner’s cabin in the loneliest corner of a distant 
— call it state or territory, as you choose. He was there in 
the body, certainly, but that curious inner self which has a 
way of rendering itself independent of environment, had 
chosen this unoccupied moment to travel across the conti- 
nent and seek out a quiet little drawing-room in the quietest 
city of the east, where he had once spent an evening with 
Milly Barron. 

One only. She had returned to Goverick almost imme- 
diately after Ferrard’s calamity, and Van Sittart had fol- 
lowed her there only to say farewell before leaving for the 
West. He owned controlling shares in a small silver mine, 
which he might fairly count among the unfulfilled promises of 
his youth, and of late he had heard murmurs of disaffection 
among the miners, accountable to a certain disturbing ele- 
ment which made him feel that some more acute and 
responsible person than the faithful and stolid German 
superintendent should be on the spot. He gave due weight 
to the advantages of stolidity when coupled with fidelity, 
but he felt himself to be the required person, especially as 
a question of mining engineering was being mooted, the 
settlement of which tempted him. He must see Milly once 
before he left, that was certain, but it was impossible that 
that interview should be any thing more than tentative in 
character. The doom of the man who had loved MiUicent, 


IN CAMP. 


379 


who had touched fibers in the intimate experience of both, 
shadowed their meeting and parting. There was an 
exquisite delicacy of feeling in Van Sittart which made him 
shrink, as he might have done by the side of an open grave, 
from seeking now to win the love which Ferrard. had lost. 
The words that Milly had spoken on the evening when he 
had interrupted that sadly memorable interview with Fer- 
rard, had shown him that, so far as his magnificent rival was 
concerned, he had nothing to fear, but he had read with the 
quickened knowledge of a man in love, the undaunted 
hope in Ferrard’s face as he left the room. Broken, beaten, 
conquered, in the battle of life was the one lover ; the other, 
with a mist of tears in his clear eyes, thought of that splen- 
did, shattered creature, and waited. He could not, in the 
first hours which assured the knowledge of that cruel fate, 
take for his own that choicest treasure with which his gal- 
lant foe had sought to crown his brilliant life. Millicent 
understood his silence and was grateful. She was not ready 
for speech yet. 

Adrian found affairs in the mining camp in a less prom- 
ising condition than his irrepressible, though modest hope- 
fulness had led him to anticipate. The spirit of discon- 
tent among the men was widely felt and deeply settled. 
Van Sittart’s powers of observation had been stimulated to 
a growth not quite native by his recent experience. He 
appropriated to himself a deserted cabin, and in company 
with a number of technical books, settled down with every 
apparent intention of staying indefinitely. Th£ life was one 
that would have been pleasant to him in other days, for his 
tastes were austere in their simplicity ; he had the appetite 
of all healthy men for “ roughing it,” and he found his zest 
for the old, imbittered studies suddenly reviving. But it 
was rather hard on him just now. No man who is not an 
avowed devotee of “ Our Lady of Pain ” enjoys the position 


38 ° 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


of undeclared lover to a distant sweetheart, about whose pur- 
suits, feelings, and movements he is left in maddening 
uncertainty. He could have borne to be silent if he were 
only in the same city with her, seeing her now and then, 
knowing at least approximately of her thought and inten- 
tion. Sometimes the thought of all the miles of earth 
between them seemed to press upon his consciousness like 
a nightmare. A nervous dread of returning at last to find 
all things changed, tormented him. Like a girl awaiting 
the arrival of the ship that brings her lover “ up from the 
under world,” he checked off each morning another day 
from his little calendar. When he rode into the little town 
that clustered "about the rude railroad station, he would 
sometimes rein in his horse by the side of the track, and look 
along the black, shining rails stretching and curving away 
to the east, and a furious urgency of desire to throw himself 
on the train that came thundering over the narrow road, and 
be borne back in mad haste to the place where his heart 
had made its home, would quicken his pulses until his whole 
soul had need to be one strong resistance. 

But a “fortuitous concurrence of atoms” somewhere in 
the past had produced in the brain of the last of the Van 
Sittarts the present phenomenon of an old-fashioned sense, 
called by old-fashioned people, duty. He had not known 
the sore need of his presence here until he came. He knew 
it now, and he intended to remain until it no longer 
existed. 

He was rewarded by a speedy tracing of the dissatisfac- 
tion to its source. The miners were nearly all old hands, 
but there had recently come among them a sturdy fellow, 
middle-aged, thick-set, blonde as a Scandinavian, but 
unmistakably American, which last fact was rather curious 
in an apostle of that rank socialism of the quality which, 
not satisfied with making the just demand for its own rights, 


IN CAMP. 


38l 

shows an aggressive disposition to claim the rights of 
others. To Van Sittart the man was already smoothly 
respectful. Among the men he used with a ready tongue 
the slang of the mines and the idiom of the West, but a 
word of exceptional character would slip out now and then. 
He was known among the miners as Tony, and the super- 
intendent gave his surname as Eland. 

“ This fellow is going to give us trouble,” said Van Sit- 
tart to himself. “ I hope it won’t be of a kind that will 
delay my return.” 

For, for all his resolute attention to the matter in hand, he 
could not keep his thoughts from flying at the slightest 
opportunity to that time when he should greet Millicent 
once more, his lips no longer shut by sorrowful respect for 
the great loss of another. 

Thus it was that we found him, seated on his rude bed 
among his disregarded books, in deep meditation that was 
unkindly shattered by a knock on his crazy door. 

“ Come ! ” said Van Sittart, rather resentfully. 

Tony entered, civil, obsequious. “ I came to see, sir,” he 
said, “ if you could make interest for me with Guttenberg 
and get me a day off to-morrow. I want to go into Bragan 
to see my wife and get some things I want.” 

Van Sittart had once seen, in the terrible little town of 
Bragan, Tony's wife, a peculiar looking woman, some years 
older than he, as far above the average miner’s wife in 
refinement as he was above the average miner in intelli- 
gence, yet with something coarse and bad in her delicate 
face, and an odd suggestion of the minor theaters in the 
faded green of her once elaborately gilded hair. But 
Adrian never permitted the gentleness of his feeling toward 
all women, whose physical disadvantages in this rough world 
always filled him with compassionate awe, to be affected by 
slightly damaging appearances. A pitying regard for the 


382 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


woman compelled to follow her husband’s fortunes into this 
wild place, made him reply the more readily : 

“ I’ll do it if possible, Bland. But this is a busy time, 
and Guttenberg may be a little difficult.” 

“You are very good, sir,” said Bland. He hesitated, 
and the book he held in his thick hand dropped awkwardly 
to the floor, at Van Sittart’s feet. Adrian picked it up. It 
lay close to his hand as he sat on the low bunk. 

“ I am not the only reader here,” he said, with the frank, 
courteous smile that was always in readiness for one whose 
position was less assured than his own. “ May I look at 
your book, Bland ? ” 

“ Certainly, sir.” 

“ ‘Progress and Poverty.’ ” 

“Yes, sir ; Henry George ; I hope you don’t object to 
that style of reading.” 

“ Not in the least. That is a book worth reading. But I 
do object to the use which is occasionally made of 
such books, with an improvement on the author’s inten- 
tion in writing, which he would hardly acknowledge as 
such.” 

“ Naturally you object, sir.” It was said with so much civil- 
ity that Van Sittart wondered why he detested the fellow 
so heartily. 

“ Sit down,” he said, ashamed of his repugnance. “ Come, 
Bland, let us talk the matter over fairly. You know and I 
know who it is that has been endeavoring to improve the 
condition of my men here, by stirring them up into a state 
of mind that is decidedly uncomfortable for all parties con- 
cerned. Of course, it is apparent to me that mining is only 
a temporary diversion with you, but Guttenberg informs me 
that your work is excellent, and I have no desire to part 
company with you if you can reconcile it with your con- 
science to repress, here and now, such trouble as you have 


IN CAMP. 


383 


made by the dissemination of doctrines, which you have 
not worked out in your own mind to their logical con- 
clusion." 

“ Why don’t you get me discharged, Mr. Van Sittart ? ’’ 
asked Bland smoothly. “ Gentlemen don’t usually inquire 
into the private reasons of their hands for behaving ill.’’ 

“ Why don’t I get you discharged ? Perhaps because I 
know myself how a man feels when he is done out of his 
chosen work. Perhaps because I think it would be a waste 
of good material. Perhaps — ” Adrian’s hand moved invol- 
untarily to the breast pocket of his loose coat. There was 
only a little photograph hidden there, but the look in the 
pictured eyes was so like that in the living ones when she 
had spoken of the denied lives of the multitude. 

“ In the first place, Bland,” said Van Sittart, coming 
quickly back to the clear, decided, business-like tone, “ you 
know that it is to my interest to keep all my men. Labor 
is scarce in this man-forsaken place. There is my need of 
you, fairly stated. In the nexl, let us come to your need of 
me. I purposely put my own interests first, because you 
would not believe in me if I did otherwise. Now, as to 
your position here ; the wages are high, the powers of the 
overseers are limited, and your privileges are more extended 
than in most mines. What do you complain of ? ” 

“ Nothing in particular.” 

“ But every thing in general ? People who stand on gen- 
eralities are liable to slip up, Bland.” 

“ I mean that I have nothing against the management of 
this particular mine. It’s more than a fair specimen— as 
mines go.” 

“ It is the mining system of the country, that you object 
to, then ? ” 

“ Not precisely, sir. The relations between the miners 
and stockholders, engage more of my attention.” 


3 8 4 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Labor and capital, eh ? And you naturally take the 
side of labor against capital.” 

“ Just as naturally as you, sir, take the side of capital 
against labor.” 

“ Do I ? You have less ground for your assertion than I 
had for mine, my friend.” 

“ You are one of the New York Van Sittarts, aren’t you ? ” 
asked Bland, abruptly. 

“ Yes,” answered Adrian, repressing the “ what is that 
to you,” which the inquiry, coming from a man of finer 
grain, would have won from him. 

“ The question of labor and capital is the first one in the 
box just now,” said Bland, drumming on his book. “ There 
isn’t a 4 snide ’ novel that hasn’t some reference to it, nor a 
two-for-a-cent newspaper that doesn’t take a high moral 
attitude on one side or the other. The reading public is 
pretty well informed that there is such a question. But if 
there is an American with every natural and artificial quali- 
fication for knowing nothing at all about the question, you’ll 
excjuse me for saying that you are that man, Mr. Van Sit- 
tart. We are so constituted that nothing but a personal 
experience of the evils arising from a false social system 
will convince us of its falsity. You,” said Bland, rising into 
something of a platform manner, as he proceeded, “ were 
born in the purples.” 

“ Of American manufacture and domestic dye,” inter- 
polated Van Sittart, with a quiet smile. 

“ Your people for generations back have had plenty to 
eat and drink and wear. There’s never been a Van Sittart 
of you all who wondered where his dinner was coming from, 
or knew how it was got. You’ve been schooled and taught 
and helped to cultivate all the Christian graces. Why on 
earth should you quarrel with the existing order of things ? 
It’s the best possible order of things for you.” 


IN CAMP. 


385 


“ Now just there,” said Adrian softly, as he lighted a 
cigar, “ is where I transfer my quarrel with the existing 
order of things to you, who represent some of the gentle- 
men who wish to cut short that existence. Has it ever 
occurred to you, that a man may wish to right certain 
wrongs that do not touch him personally ? ” 

“ No,” said Bland, with a certain hard honesty, new in 
words and bearing, and seemingly called into play by his 
companion. “ Come, Mr. Van Sittart, you’re a gentleman 
and a scholar. You know as well as 1 do that the end of 
human existence is to attain happiness.” 

“ The summum bonum , certainly, but we may have our 
little differences of opinion as to what constitutes this 
highest good.” 

“ Oh, of course, I've heard that kind of talk before, from 
gentlemen whose primary desires and needs were so well 
satisfied that they had every chance to indulge in all sorts 
of exalted secondary ones. Yet not one of you but would 
find his summum bonum in a good dinner, if he was ever 
brought down to the starving point. See here, Mr. Van 
Sittart, I know what I’m talking about. You’ll see such 
stories as mine in every police report and every cheap illus- 
trated paper, but perhaps you’ve never given your attention 
to them. I was born in a lying-in hospital. My mother was 
a shop-girl, my father what will pass for a gentleman, the son 
of a big dry-goods man. I never had enough to eat when I 
was a little chap ; I was never cool in summer or warm in 
winter. I heard nothing but what your set call ‘ evil ’ — 
without the gilding — from the time I could understand 
words. My mother was a decent woman, I believe, though 
she anticipated the future in her disregard of marriage 
laws, but she died before I was three years old. After that 
you may believe I roughed it.” 

“ I do believe it.” 


386 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Well,” said Bland, turning a little restlessly in his seat, 
as the earnest sweetness of the words fell on his ear. “ I 
don’t mind owning to you that I had a chance or two. When 
I was eighteen, I had a place that I liked. I was in one 
of the Malden mills, I wasn’t highly enlightened then, but I 
enjoyed myself. I was engaged to be married to a girl who 
worked in the same place. One day, without a word of 
warning, the wages of all the hands in our room were cut 
down from ten dollars a week to eight. Two dollars a week 
isn’t much to you, you’d never miss it, but it was the differ- 
ence between comfort and misery to some of us. The man 
who owned that mill never had a flower the less on his din- 
ner table, or his wife one bead less on her silk gowns, but 
some fellows who were married saw their delicate children 
die because they couldn’t buy the fine food they needed, 
and as for me — well, I didn’t get married, that’s all. But 
things had gone pretty far between us; we made so sure of 
being married, and the girl I liked didn’t appreciate the 
higher morality of free unions. I didn’t myself, in those 
days — and she went — what you’d call — to the devil. 

“ It was about that time I made up my mind that the 
world owed me a living. I’ve made it pay pretty high some- 
times. These fellows that grind the face of the poor had 
better look out. When we’re smart we make them hand 
over something more than the pennies they’ve gouged out 
of us. I’ve nothing against you, Mr. Van Sitttart, or the 
others concerned in this mine, but you’re part of a system 
that’s got to go. It’s our turn next.” 

“It’s your turn now if you care to take it. You’ve left 
generalities to deal with a particular case, Bland, and I shall 
do the same. I know there is a deal of bitter, brutal wrong in 
the world, and the weak go to the wall. But you are not among 
them. You are a shrewd fellow. You could have earned a 
good living for yourself with half the exertion you have 


IN CAMP. 


387 


spent in making the world pay your way. It’s a thousand 
times harder to be an adventurer than an honest man. The 
ingenuity you have exercised in stirring up the not over- 
receptive men here would have sufficed to set you up in a 
business where, in time, you might have had your chance to 
grind the face of the poor, or try the alternative. Think it 
over, will you ? And I hope you’ll arrive at my estimate of 
your abilities, otherwise you’ll have to get out.” Adrian 
spoke gently, but the ring of dictatorial firmness was not 
missing from the last, short words. 

Threat was ready for threat. 

“ I could make things very unpleasant for you, Mr. Van 
Sittart,” said Bland, insinuatingly. 

“ I haven’t a doubt of it. We have a vast power for 
injuring and annoying each other in this world.” 

“ Do you want me to try ? ” 

“ Since you are disposed to exertion, I advise you to 
employ it in the other direction. Your partial information 
concerning yourself must be my excuse for asking you what 
calling you have been compelled to follow in the intervals 
when the world failed to come down as handsomely as might 
have been expected.” 

“ Oh, I’ve done a little of every thing. I've been mag- 
netic healer, lecturer, keeper of notion-shops, farm hand, 
and this is by no means my first experience in a mine.” 

“ That is sufficiently evident. You combine a variety of 
talents,” said Van Sittart, dryly. “ Do you know that Gut- 
tenberg’s assistant leaves next week ? And do you suppose 
that you could employ all this versatility in the somewhat 
limited exercise of his functions ? ” 

“ What do you mean, sir ? ” 

“ What I say. I know I am risking something, but I am 
used to that in my experiments. I’ll give you a chance. 
You probably consider it an offense that I am in the posi- 


3^8 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


tion to do so, or at best but a just debt paid by a supposed 
representative of the old system to one of the new, but that 
does not matter, so long as you take it.” 

Bland’s pale eyes were wide with amaze. 

“ You think I’m something of a scoundrel,” he said at 
last. 

“ Yes, but I don’t think you are altogether to blame for it.” 

“ And you offer me a responsible position.” 

“ It isn’t as responsible as you think. I mean to stay and 
see what you do with it. I intended going east in a month, 
but ” — with a sigh — “ I must wait. We are all of us bound 
to pay our debt to humanity — which abstraction is not 
always as polite as might be in collecting it — and I'll con- 
tribute my time on this occasion, which is about the costliest 
contribution I could make just now. I shall have the reward 
of seeing how you bear yourself when you’ve had a taste of 
the upper hand business, and how you treat your men and 
brethren become your subordinates.” 

It was full twenty years since anyone had seen Tony 
Bland look just as he looked now. Nevertheless, in spite of 
that improved expression, he was an unpleasant fellow, Van 
Sittart thought. 

“ I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Van Sittart,” said 
the miner, with an oddly florid bow. 

“ You are more than welcome if you will believe one thing 
that I have to say to you. The course you have been tak- 
ing so far is bound to result in an iron despotism rather 
than universal freedom. That will come when men are 
wise enough to use it, but you are staving it off and paving 
the way for an interim which will be a reign of terror for 
the poor souls whom you aspire to lead, through your supe- 
rior knowledge, into a path of which the end is unknown to 
you.” 

Adrian rose. As he did so a photograph dropped from 


IN CAMP. 


389 


his pocket. Bland civilly bent to restore it. As the pic- 
tured face met his eyes, the genuine friendliness of his 
expression shifted suddenly into a malignity that flashed in 
yellow light from his heavy-lidded eyes. 

“ Milly Barron, by the Lord ! ” 

“ What is it that you say ? ” cried Adrian, in a voice that 
cut the silence like a whip lash. Bland was guiltless of any 
desire to hurt Van Sittart, for whom he cherished a sudden 
liking, but all lesser and later emotions were merged in the 
delight of gratifying at last the revenge, long owed to the 
girl who had escaped and frustrated him years ago. 

“ Oh, beg your pardon, if it's a personal matter,” he said 
with an odious smile, “ but it’s a surprise to meet an old 
flame in this way.” 

Adrian’s slender limbs were endowed with the steel 
strength of a tiger’s as he leaped upon the man and felled 
him to the earth. 

“ You hound ! ” he gasped, as the heavy figure dropped 
at his feet. “ How dare you take that lady’s name in your 
vile lips ? ” 

It was the second time in Anthony Balland’s life that 
Millicent Barron was responsible for personal violence 
offered to him. 

“ Her name ? ” said he, looking up from his ignominious 
position, with an ugly color coming upon his white face. 

That’s not the only thing belonging to her that my lips 
are familiar with ! ” 

As he finished speaking a great fear fell upon him. He 
saw the dark fire in Adrian’s eyes, the terrible flush on the 
corded forehead. He saw death gleaming at him from that 
rigid face. He hated to do it, but, as the slender body of 
his antagonist swooped down upon him, a glittering shaft of 
steel pierced it. 

“ By the Lord, I’m sorry ! ” said Dr. Balland, as he 


390 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


turned the motionless figure over on its back. “ The jade ! 
I don’t thank her for this any more than for those old 
favors. Well, it's self-defense if it finishes him, and he’ll 
let me alone — like the rest of them — for her sake, if he gets 
over it.” 

Nevertheless, Dr. Balland found it expedient to leave the 
cabin and its silent occupant precipitately. He had reasons 
for wishing to avoid the publicity of an investigation and 
trial, quite unconnected with this unforeseen event. He 
cast one look at the fair, refined face turned up in the flick- 
ering light, and at the long graceful helpless hands. One 
of them was red with the blood that flowed sluggishly across 
the motionless breast. Then he fled out into the darkness. 
That darkness covers his fate. What mountain pool or 
creviced gorge shelters his bones will never be known. He 
vanished so from the world which owed him a living, a bad 
man, for whose evil you and I, and others like us, must bear 
our just portions of blame. The stumbling step in the 
blackness of the night that sent him to his death was acci- 
dent. Was it accident also that sowed the taint in his 
blood, neglected its workings in infancy, stimulated it by 
injustice as he grew into youth, and confirmed it in vice as 
he hardened into manhood ? 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 


“ POME immediately. 
Vy wants you. 


Adrian is here and very ill. He 
“ L. S. Schuyler.” 


Milly read this telegram with whitening lips. It was 
handed her as she entered the hall of the little house in 
Harbach Street. She had just returned from a visit to an 
aunt in a tiny central New York village, where only weekly 
papers came. 

“ Is mamma at home ? ” she asked the maid. 

“ No, ma’am.” 

She took a card from the salver on the hat-rack and 
wrote : 

“ Dear Mamma : I have been summoned to Laura. 
There is serious illness there. I wish I could have seen you 
first. Will write.” 

The hackman was bringing in her portmanteau. 

“ Take it back to the carriage,” she said, “ I shall want 
you again.” 

It was at twilight that Laura met her at the door of the 
house in Gramercy Park. 

“ He will not know you,” she said with a tremulous kiss. 
“ He has been unconscious since he spoke your name early 
this morning.” 

“ What is it, what has happened ? ” whispered Milly, her 
words broken in the utterance by the violent beating of her 
heart. 


39 2 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ He has been wounded — fever has set in.” 

“ Oh Laura ! When — how ? ” 

“ A man whom he had suspected — one of the miners at 
Bragan — was seen to enter his cabin in the camp. They 
found Adrian hours later ” — she stopped. 

“ Mamma and I went on. The doctors said it was better 
to bring him home,” she said after a little while. 

“ Will ” — Milly let the sentence die away, uncompleted. 
She could not ask the supreme question. 

“ What have they done with the man ? ” 

“ He escaped.” 

“ Do they know the cause of the attack ? ” 

A painful flush stained Laura’s wan face as she an- 
swered. 

“ He was inciting the men to strike, I believe. It is sup- 
posed that Adrian endeavored to remonstrate.” 

There was a suggestion of something withheld in Laura’s 
manner that Milly noticed, in the midst of her misery. 

“When can I see him ?” she asked at last. 

“ Now ; at any time. ^ Nothing makes any difference." 

She led the way. As Milly neared the room a sobbing 
sound arrested her. 

“ Oh, what is it ? ” she cried. 

“ He breathes with difficulty. We have grown accus- 
tomed to that moan.” 

Milly entered. The pallid face against the pillows of 
the couch was so ineffably gentle that the sight calmed all 
her throbbing nerves into quiet. She sat down in the chair 
that the nurse vacated, and looked with dry eyes and lips 
on the gallant figure thus prostrate. Laura stole to her 
side. 

“ Milly ! If you do not love him I will never forgive you 
so long as I live.” 

Milly’s look answered her. About midnight the watchers 


BETWEEN TWO WORLDS . 


393 


saw the pallor of the patient face invaded by a creeping 
flush. The quiet head began to move restlessly on the pil- 
low, and one hand groped its uncertain way up to the chest 
that the labored breathing painfully lifted. Broken words 
alternated with the moans. 

Milly bent her ear to listen. 

“ I would not have minded, Haslett, but for her. A fel- 
low wants something to offer, else he has no right to ask 
for her sweet self.” 

Then, with sudden sharpness, through ajl the pitiful gasps: 
“ You are a rascal, sir, but I prefer my place to yours. You 
will know why, some day.” 

The words became quicker, and bending over him, they 
knew that as his mind traveled on its mysterious journey, 
he worked over and over again that old problem. On and 
on toiled the fevered brain. Almost right — almost ! Try 
this — ah, one moment ! They heard the low, thrilling 
supreme cry of ecstatic fulfillment as the long dream came 
true, and he saw his triumph before him. Then words of 
careful explanation addressed to another followed ; there 
was silence for a while, broken at last by a sharp, agonized 
cry of incredulity. Then back to the old murmur, “ I 
would not have minded, Haslett, but for her.” 

Silence again, and the heavy breath panted on. 

Toward morning the broken voice sounded again. It 
was reasoning now, expostulating. “ It won’t do, my man. 
You are doing these poor fellows a sorry service. Think it 
over. See here, I’ll give you a chance. What is that you 
say ? Milly ! ” There came a fearful cry. “ Milly, my love, 
my flower of all the earth, how dare he ! Don’t let him 
touch the picture ! But your life is too low a thing to take 
in payment.” 

The groping hand sought the center of pain in his torn 
breast. 


394 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Are there two worlds ? ” he murmured, a look of sad 
wonder on the harassed face. 

“ Well,” thought the woman at his side, “ he has done with 
this one, and it is too late, too late for him to know that I 
have learned to love him with a hearty sweetness that shows 
me how unreal that old romance was, else it could never 
have so passed from my life.” 

She wondered at the placidity of her despair. In the old 
days she had been so ready with frantic grief. In this honest 
hour her serenity was as deep as her woe. 

As the long, slanting bars of early sunlight struck in 
through the crevices in the closed shutters, a smile, light 
and bright as the new morning, came upon the face of the 
sick man. 

“ Keep it, Haslett ! ” he cried with sudden distinctness. 
“ You have earned forme a place in her thoughts.” 

For the first time Milly’s composure was broken. She 
grew deadly pale. She leaned forward and touched one 
of Laura’s limp hands as it lay on her knee. 

“ Was it Haslett who robbed him ? ” she asked in a 
tremulous whisper. 

“ Yes,” answered Laura in a dull voice. 

Millicent laid her head down on the pillow close to the 
radiant face there. 

“ He robbed me of my youth and he robbed you of your 
work, my darling, but he can not keep us apart any longer. 
Oh, if you can only live long enough to know this.” 

Would he not feel her close presence ? But it was another 
name than hers that came from the fevered lips. 

“ Ferrard, Ferrard ! Oh, forgive me ! I grudged her to 
you. I’d give my life to see you look again as you did that 
night when I thought you had taken her from me, old 
man.” 

With the full sunlight the stupor fell again. Mrs. Schuy- 


BETWEEN TWO WORLDS . 


395 


ler came to the side of the bed and sought to draw Millicent 
away. As the girl lifted her eyes to the sorrowful face, the 
kind woman dropped the hand she had taken persuasively 
in her own. They let her alone after that. 

So the day wore on, and still she sat beside him, holding 
the hand that seemed to grow cold and colder in her grasp. 
Her eyes never moved from the face so soon to be hidden 
in the sealed bosom of mother earth. 

“To-day I can look at him, speak to him, measure his 
breath by mine. To-morrow — ” 

As she spoke the breath grew fainter. Longer intervals 
came between each gentle gasp. Suddenly the dark eyes 
opened and met hers, liquid with the love that would only 
go out with the ebbing life. She met the quiet gaze with a 
bright smile on her lips, a dull despair in her heart. 

“ Are there two worlds ? ” he asked again, as a child asks 
a question. 

“ Oh, my love ! Who knows, who knows ! ” she cried in 
an agony, holding his look with her own as if she would 
hold the soul in his body with that strenuous gaze. 

“ I wish — there might be — The longest life — gives too 
little time — to love you, Milty — but mine — has been — so 
short.” 

The lids fell again. His watch ticked loudly in the 
silence. The quiet nurse lifted a spoon from a tumbler of 
medicine and laid it on the table. Milly watched her, 
fascinated. Were drugs of no avail now ? His lips moved 
again and two words were faintly but clearly spoken, 

“ Tony Bland.” 

Milly sat as if turned to stone. That clairvoyance which 
comes to us all in hours like this, unrolled from this name 
the whole story. She spoke at last in measured tones. 

“ Is that the man’s name, Laura ? ” 

“ Yes.” 


39 ^ 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Balland.” 

“ He said Bland,” said Laura trembling. 

“ It was Anthony Balland. You knew ? ” 

“ I guessed. From what they told me at Bragan and 
from the woman he called his wife. Her real name was 
Branton.” 

Millicent looked down at the figure on the bed. 

“ My work,” she said, quietly. So it had come to this. 
The careless step taken in her rash unhappy girlhood had 
resulted so. The low life, the contact of which with her 
own was so hideous a remembrance, had yet reached high 
enough to lay in the dust the lofty head of her true lover. 
And she had meant to do right through it all. Whatever of 
selfish desire to escape from a selfish sorrow there had 
been in that flight to the cure of souls, it had been 
leavened and alloyed by aspirations toward a higher right 
to be thus, poor child, fulfilled. Oh the fearful con- 
sequences that leave our sins unavenged, and follow on 
our half-foolish, half-holy mistakes ! 

“ Adrian had my picture,” said Millicent, in a low tone 
of conviction. “ He would never have mentioned my name. 
It was that that led to — this.” 

“Yes. I gave it to him.” 

“ Where is it ? ” 

“ I found it on the floor of .the cabin, myself. He knew 
enough then to ask for it. He has it. It is under his 
pillow now, Milly.” 

“ Let me see it.” 

“ No, no ! ” cried Laura, nervously. “ You will disturb 
him.” 

“ Nothing will ever disturb him again,” said Millicent 
bitterly. “ I will have it, Laura.” 

Her icy hand sought and found the little card. Ah me ! 
It was red with Adrian’s blood. A low cry from Laura 


BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 


397 


brought the eyes that dwelt with growing horror on the 
terrible sight to the face on the pillow. The eyes were 
opened, seeking hers with the old, dear, intelligent look. 
Suddenly they closed, and a look of infantine peace spread 
its calm radiance over the satisfied countenance. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


“ AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN.” 

HEN can I see him ? ” asked Milly of the doctor, 



vv who now followed his daily visit to Adrian by 
one to her. She was very white and very weak ; there were 
threads of untimely silver in the deep gold of her hair, but 
an abiding sunshine shone from the depths of her liquid 


eyes. 


“ That depends more on yourself than on him. If you 
are feeling a little more jolly to-morrow, you shall be 
wheeled into his room. He is quite himself. The powers 
of endurance in those Van Sittarts is something 
phenomenal. I don’t know another man who could have 
lived through such a siege. It has been a close call as it 
is. But he is doing splendidly. The wound is healing 
rapidly, and he has bidden a permanent adieu to the fever.” 

It was a shadowy, shattered Millicent that was wheeled 
like a disabled queen on a rolling throne into the green 
library adjoining Adrian’s sick-room. Neither spoke as 
the attendant drew Milly’s chair to the side of the invalid’s 
couch and left them, but a long quiet look of mutual under- 
standing passed between them. 

At last Van Sittart broke the happy silence. He held 
out a thin hand, which was promptly clasped by one as 


frail. 


“ I think I should never have recovered, Millicent, if I 
had not felt that it would not be the thing to die without 
telling you that I love you. If I live, and I think that matter 


AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN. 


399 

is settled for the present — it will be for you and you only, 
if you are willing to marry me, or if you send me on my 
way alone. Mind, I am not pleading for your divine com- 
passion now. Love is much, but it is not all of life. I 
have my man’s place to fill in the world, and I mean to fill 
it worthily. But whether you take me or not, all I do 
henceforward shall be done in your name, and that will 
keep every deed white till I die.” 

“ Wait ! ” said Milly trembling, “ before you offer me 
your honorable life^ ; before you consecrate your splendid 
future at so unworthy a shrine, I have something to say to 
you. I spent — I spent a week in the house of the man 
who would have murdered you, the man whom Laura and 
I discovered to be Anthony Balland. There were wicked 
people there, though some were good. It was not a right 
place for me to be. I have done not only not well, but ill, 
though I meant — ” 

“ My little girl,” said Adrian, with a faint laugh, but griev- 
ing at the sight of her tears, “ do you think I did not hear 
that story, long ago ? Aunt Amabel told me about you long 
before I ever saw you, and it only heightened the interest 
I felt in meeting Laura’s friend. Surely you can not think 
me such a cad as to blame you for innocently sharing some 
rather disreputable lodgings with my nearest living rela- 
tive ? ” 

“ I may be morbid about that,” said Milly, “ but it was 
all so horrible, and it might so easily have been so much 
worse. But there is something else. I loved — I loved the 
one who did you a yet more cruel injury than that wretched 
man could inflict.” 

“ I have heard that, too,” said Van Sittart, more gravely. 
“ That did cut, but, Millicent, I think I do not care who 
you loved first, or second, if only I can be sure that you 
will love me last.” 


400 


A S COMMON MOR TA L S. 


“ Why do you want me ? ” cried Milly. “ I am, and have 
been, and shall be — nothing ! ” 

“ I want you, Sweet, because you are the very noblest 
woman I have ever known. Because, having been cheated 
out of my own hopes, I have the more energy left to help 
you fulfill your own. They are higher than mine ever were, 
but my love can reach to that height, Millicent. You hoped 
to see much that will never be seen in our day and genera- 
tion ; but you will learn to be content, to help prepare for 
that better time which shall govern the world when we are 
dust, or living again in green grass or new flowers, under 
the feet of the little children of a later, brighter day. So 
shall you ‘ join the choir invisible of those immortal dead 
who live again in minds made better by their presence.’ ” 

What did Millicent answer ? Only, with a burst of child- 
ish tears, “ Oh ! do not dwell on what I may be. I had 
rather hear you say you love me, and want me, just as I 
am.” 

A deep flush came on Adrian’s wan face. 

“ Millicent,” he said, in a low voice, “ I have not dared 
to dwell on what it will be to have you for my own, lest I 
should go mad with joy ! ” 

Well ! he had her for his own when the leaves were 
blushing lustily, under the first sharp caresses of autumn. 
They were very happy ; but both had seen too clearly the 
sins and sorrows of this wrong, yet slowly righting world 
ever to enjoy the nymph-like existence of young, untried 
souls. Even on her wedding day, Millicent thought with 
tears of that cowering, gibbering creature, its aimless hands 
straying among childish toys, that had once been Paul 
Ferrard, and, with a yet deeper pang, of that sadder 
wreck, the man crowned in honor, high in public esteem, 
who had won her girlish heart in the days when Rodney 
Haslett was not all lost. 


“ AFTER LONG GRIEF AND PAIN." 


401 


“ Oh, Adrian ! ” she said, passing otfer in silence that last 
bitter memory, “ I can never become reconciled to the fate 
of Ferrard.” 

“ Nor I. It clouds my joy in you.” 

“ And yet,” said Milly, musingly, “ nothing but the phys- 
ical force which he represented could have subdued that 
man. That insensate rock, dashing all that splendid life to 
ruin, conquered him. He never thought of including the 
blind, natural forces among the circumstances we have to 
overcome. Oh, the pity of it ! ” 

“ He loved you, Milly.” 

“ Yes, and he understood me,” said Milly, mournfully. 
“ He was right when he said there was too much and too 
little of me. My heart may have moved my hands ; my 
head could never guide them. The one decisive action of 
my life, until now, resulted — ” She stopped, with a look of 
such terror and tenderness combined, that her husband 
threw a protecting arm around her trembling figure. 

“ There was a chorus of family ‘ I told you so’s ! ’ when I 
came back,” said Milly, turning the perilous subject with a 
laugh, “ but when I showed a disposition to walk unadven- 
turously in the accepted path, not one of those dear people 
but felt vaguely disappointed. They all thought I should 
have done something different, yet not one of them can be 
brought to indicate the thing, at once original and decorous, 
which I should have done.” 

“ How will this do ? ” asked Adrian, twirling on her finger 
the plain but powerful circle of gold, guarding a great lim- 
pid flash of Van Sittart’s diamonds. 

“ Oh, this is the worst of all ! ” 

“ Your flattery is delicate, Mrs. Van Sittart, but unmis- 
takable.” 

“ You know what I mean ! ” 


402 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


“ Now and then, my love. I am happy to say that I have 
mastered the lower branches of knowledge regarding your 
mental processes. But there are still limitless fields to con- 
quer in that direction of learning.” 

“ You know,” said Milly, with a look of loving scorn, 
“ that they collectively and individually bestow on me an 
unreserved approval, which is a new phase in my relations 
with them. And it’s all because — I quote Uncle Jo’s subtle 
phrase — I have settled myself so finely.” 

“ I am glad they are able to take such a cheerful view of 
the matter.” 

“ I am afraid that is more than you will be able to do,’’ 
said Milly, ruefully, “ when you find out how shockingly 
incapable I am in matters of practical utility. I saw a 
repressed pity for you shining in Uncle Jo’s eyes as he con- 
gratulated you. And he gave me a little lecture when he 
followed up his wedding gift the other night. Did you 
ever see so many silver forks together in your life before ? 

“ ‘ Now, Milly,’ he said, ‘ you’ve got a nice fellow ; as clear 
headed and sensible a chap, in spite of his high notions, as 
ever lived. I do hope you’ll settle down into a nice little 
housekeeper, and make things cozy for him. It’s a great 
pity that you are going to live in that musty old barn of a 
house in Washington Square. New York, too. /don’t see 
why you don’t come to Goverick ; it’s just the place for 
young couples, full of pretty little brand-newhouses. Look 
at that row on Gregory Street, for instance, every one of ’em 
finished in hardwood, butler’s pantry, sanitary plumbing, 
stained glass in the vestibule doors, every thing first class. 
And so handy to our church, too.” 

“ I like his disposition to keep you near him, Milly. What 
did you say ? ” 

“ I told him that, I intended to make you as happy as the 
limited nature of my powers would permit, but I would not 


“AFTER LONG GRIEF AND FAINT 403 

run the risk of inducing you to live in so profoundly immoral 
a place as Goverick.” 

“ Poor Mr. White ! ” 

“ I meant it,” said Milly, earnestly. “ Morality is a word 
of wider meaning than common consent has made it. A 
place where there is no rush of cosmopolitan life, to bring 
in new ideas from other social bodies, yet a place emanci- 
pated from the rude, simple, often tragic, necessities of 
rural life, is bound to catch only the shallowest whispers of 
the new thought, while it weeds out the poetry from the old. 
It is neither sturdy nor elegant, purely natural nor finely 
artificial. I am speaking, as usual, from personal prejudice, 
which in this case would lead me to choose as my home the 
heart of a great city, or else a trackless forest ; but there 
may be found some excuse for my prejudice in that I know 
mvself to have suffered from the pressure of ideas, provin- 
' daily small in themselves, yet bearing the cumulative weight 
of a great community. I’ve made mistakes and blunders, 
and come to grief and to naught generally, but I truly think 
I might have grown into something better worth your taking 
if I had been nourished by more liberal influences.” 

“ I’m satisfied to take this shattered remnant of a youth 
of promise.” 

“ You may find a flaw in your content when the favoring 
light of our honeymoon gives way to the revealing glare of 
married intimacy. And, Adrian, Uncle Jo is right about 
me in one respect ; I am not, never have been, never shall 
be, a domestic woman.’’ 

“ With all deference to the memory of my sweet mother,” 
said Adrian, reverently, “ and to the dear lady who cried so 
bitterly as she kissed you good-by this morning, don’t you 
think we have enough of that type on hand ? It is not 
demanded of every man that he shall be domestic, martial 
or scholarly in his tastes. Why should we have but one 


404 


AS COMMON MORTALS. 


type for woman, and insist that she conform rigorously to 
that ? This I know, Millicent, of you and of every real 
woman and man, that she or he will sacrifice the dearest 
inclinations if the welfare of the one beloved demands it ; 
and my welfare demands that you shall follow always the 
bent of your unique nature until it leads you to that height 
where you can look down into the crowd that looks so con- 
fused when we are in the thick of it, and see your real work 
in the world/’ 

“ But still,” said Millicent, returning womanlike to the 
lower aspect of their blended lives, “ suppose I should fail 
to make you — not happy — but comfortable ! ” 

“ I am able to face the supposition. Oh ! Milly, I have 
no doubt that it will be hard to live with you sometimes ; 
but there will always be one thing harder, and that is — to 
live without you.” 


The End. 



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